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In 2021, I decided to stop doing annual updates.

At that time, I thought I had FI figured out and was just living a “normal” life (so no need to talk about it anymore).

Well, a lot has changed since then!

Turns out, I didn’t have everything figured out :/

I explain more in today’s short podcast episode:

Listen Nowhttps://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/madfientist/eighth-year-of-freedom.mp3* Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts * Download MP3 by right-clicking here

Highlights* How the pandemic changed my outlook on the future * Why my post-FI life is drastically different from what I imagined it would be * Learning how to use money for the first time * The reason I’m focusing more on other investments (and what those investments are) * Why stock picking isn’t great, even when your stock picks outperform

Show Links* First Year of Freedom * Second Year of Freedom * Third Year of Freedom * Fourth Year of Freedom * Fifth Year of Freedom

Full TranscriptMad Fientist: Hey, what’s up, everybody. Welcome to the FInancial Independence Podcast.

So three years ago in 2021, I decided to stop doing my annual updates. And if you’ve followed the podcast for a while, you know every year since I left my job in 2016, I’ve done an annual update talking about what I learned over that last year.

And when it got to 2021, I felt like I was really just living normal life, and I was getting bored making the annual updates because I didn’t really think much had changed. And I didn’t know if I was actually giving any sort of meaningful advice to anybody by just talking about what I had been doing for the past year.

So I decided to stop doing them and it’s amazing how much has changed since then.

So one, I don’t have it all figured out and I’ve learned a lot over the last three years, so I figured I could share what I’ve learned over those last three years and maybe start doing these annual updates again if I continue to learn things, but I’ve also realized that things are going to get really weird with AI over the next decade, and content is going to be able to be created instantaneously by computers.

And really the only thing I have is my human story. And that’s the most important thing. And my unique experiences that I can share and the lessons I learn through actually living this sort of lifestyle.

So both of those things combined made me realize that, Hey, I should maybe do another one of these at least. And then maybe continuing to do these in future years if I have some interesting things to share.

So anyway, so this is my eighth year of freedom post, and I can’t believe it’s been eight years. That’s absolutely insane, and it was actually August 1st that I left my job, but I’m not really on a good schedule these days, and so this is over a month late.

But hey, better late than never.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and this is valuable lessons from my eighth year of freedom.

So the biggest thing since 2021 is really that I feel like I’m actually using money for the first time. My entire life has been saving money, investing money, hoarding money pretty much.

And I don’t think I’ve ever even tried to use it because using it was always the last resort. And if I was using it, that was a mistake because now that money can’t grow anymore. And it’s been a huge mental shift to now try to use it when I’ve just spent my whole life accumulating it. It’s been a lot of fun and I have a article coming out soon, if I can get around to writing it, talking about learning how to spend and actually enjoying it while I’m learning how to do it. And I think that’s been the biggest change. And particularly we bought a house last year. Our last house, I think we sold in 2014 and we’ve just been renting ever since and renting has been great.

But now that we have a son and we want to settle down and we don’t want to have to move every year if we don’t want to. I know my wife never wanted to move every year, but I was always keen to try something new. But now that we have a son in the picture just having a stable place that we can put all our stuff, and as parents out there know you have a ton of stuff when you get a kid, because grandparents just keep buying them stuff.

So we decided to buy a house and that’s been a great purchase. And this is actually the third house we’ve owned. We owned a house in Scotland back in 2005, and then we bought a house in Vermont in 2011. But this is actually the first house that I’ve enjoyed owning.

For anybody on the path to FI out there who is like me and was just like very motivated to get there as quickly as possible, I don’t think I should have owned houses back then, because any unexpected expenses that came up, I would stress about them and yeah, owning a house is nothing but unexpected expenses. So I think yeah, if I was doing it again, I’d probably rent most of the time that I was on the path to FI and then buy after because now I can actually enjoy it and I am enjoying it. It is a luxury. It is a splurge and it’s a great splurge because I’m talking to you from my perfect home studio that I’ve spent months and months designing and building. And I love it so much. And yeah, if I was as tight with money as I was back in my FI days, I wouldn’t have this studio. And I would have been stressing about all the unexpected expenses that have already popped up over the last year and a half.

So homeownership has been amazing. And again, if you would have told me this eight years ago that I’d want to be a homeowner again after the horrors of my previous two homeownership stints, I would have said you’re crazy, but that just shows how much changes as you get older and as your priorities change.

And the other big thing that I would be surprised about back then that I am loving now is stuff. So even though I just was talking about being overwhelmed by too much kid stuff, buying stuff for the house has been a lot of fun. And it adds to my daily joy. So yeah, I didn’t think stuff actually increased my happiness, but it really does.

And I think it’s mainly because I’ve gone so long without any good stuff. So as we were renting, we would always have furnished rentals. And since we moved so often, I hated packing up boxes and moving. So I just limited the amount of stuff I had. So that was, that just meant that we used, all the rental house’s kitchen stuff, and whatever TV was on the wall and sound system was there, we just used that.

But, now that we have our own home, and we know we’re staying here for a while, I bought nice things that I really do enjoy. So anything from, the coffee grinder that I’ve talked about many times on this show and other shows, to just like really nice mugs, to a great sound system for the TV and speakers in every room that make music sound so good and I can just turn it on instantly and just have music following me around the house.

And then obviously the studio is just kitted out with everything that I’ve ever wanted. Speaking of the studio, I’ve set it up so that I can do a video from here now. So if you want these podcasts to be in video form in the future, go to madfientist.com/youtube and follow me there. And if I get enough YouTube followers, I’ll start to make the efforts to do video, which would require me to actually shower before recording these, which today, that did not happen so I’m glad this one’s audio, but. If I get enough followers on YouTube, then I’ll start doing these in video and I’ll give you a little tour of my home studio, which is incredible. So go to madfientist.com/youtube to follow me on there.

So those are two big changes, my love of home ownership and love of stuff.

But going back to the initial point where I’m actually using my money for the first time, I realized that’s a big mistake I made on my journey to FI was just disregarding the fact that actually one day you are going to spend your money and if you’re not really practicing how to spend it you’re not going to be that good at it.

So this has been like a three year journey of trying to get better at spending money and trying to reframe it as something that does get used and you use it to increase the happiness in your life. And the one thing I keep saying to myself is something that I heard in the Die With Zero podcast that I published a few months ago with Chris Hutchins.

And that’s when Bill Perkins said, when’s the party? And I keep saying that to myself in my head, because that’s true. When’s the party? Because even if you don’t spend your money, you’re going to give it away at the end of your life. So there’s a party at some point and somebody who’s going to benefit from it.

So you can either use it during your life and give it away during your life or at the end of your life, it’s all going to be given away and somebody is going to have a party and it may be a charity, it may be your heirs, if you want to be a part of that party, then you need to figure out how to spend it or give it away during your life.

And that’s something I’m really focused on.

So in that same sort of vein as, using money for the first time, I feel like this is the first time I’m appreciating all my past investments. It feels like all my investments are really paying off. So for example, like to buy this house I used my portfolio to do it and that was just eye opening because you’re saving for FI and it’s all just this theoretical thing.

It’s not like you all of a sudden take out all your money, give it to the FI person and they give you all the freedom. It’s not like you’re actually using it to buy freedom. You are obviously, but you’re not clicking a button to do it. It’s just a theoretical thing like, okay, yeah, my bank account says I have this much in it, so now I don’t have to work anymore.

But it doesn’t really feel like you’re utilizing that money. Whereas when I bought the house, I did just do that, which I clicked a button and pretty much bought a house, which is a crazy transaction that I’m going to write an article about in the future as well. Hopefully next year. Cause it was just the most insane amazing financial transaction I’ve ever completed in my life.

So anyway, so that was like the first time I was like, Whoa, okay. So yeah, I did save up a good amount of money and it can be used to buy amazing things like this big stone house in the countryside. But I also feel like, other investments are also paying off. So my focus on health over the last decade and now I’m in my early forties and I still feel like I’m 20 and I’m very thankful for that, especially having a little toddler to chase after and pick up and throw around.

So I feel like, yeah, those past decisions are starting to bear fruit and, like my friendships I get to go home to the States and see some great friends that I’ve had for decades. And we pick up exactly where we left off. And it’s we’ve just never stopped hanging out, which is fantastic.

My 22 year investment in my relationship with Jill has made it possible. greatest human to ever exist in the entire history of humanity. So that investment is paying off in ways I wouldn’t have even imagined. And so it’s making me think of my future investments. And now the money investment is all on autopilot and locked down, and I’m not worried about that, it’s focusing on those future investments.

So again, maintaining health. So that’s a huge focus because I am an older dad, but I don’t want to act like one. So I want to be playing ice hockey and skiing with my son and hopefully doing it for the next 40 years rather than just the next 10 or 20.

So health is a huge focus. And I know that investment pays off, but it’s one of the most important ones, so that’s the one I’m focusing on most.

I’m trying to think about ways to increase the investment in my friendships that I’ve built over the last few decades and figuring out ways that maybe money can help that by maybe, renting an Airbnb where my friends live for a month and just being there rather than just coming into town for a week and seeing everybody quickly, just like actually living there for a little chunk of time every year so that we can just pick up where we left off and continue to build those relationships that I value so much.

And then the biggest investment, investing in my son, which has already paid off in so many ways and has been the biggest gift of FI, being able to be there and spend all this time with him and all this quality time as he’s been growing up and to be there for all the big milestones. So to continue investing in him and enjoying every minute of it along the way.

So again, it’s thinking about ways that money can contribute to that and help that. So rather than focusing solely on the money investment, I’m again, trying to reframe it and think about how I can use money to increase these other investments that are far more important at the end of the day and are the ones that really bring a lot of happiness.

And the other big thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about over the past few years is something I think the pandemic taught me, and that’s, there’s a risk to putting things off. And I think back pre pandemic, I always just thought yeah, I can save all this money and then in a few years I’ll do this.

But the pandemic showed us that, this period of health and peace and free travel, we’ve taken it for granted because it’s all we’ve known and that’s not guaranteed to continue.

So when I think about whether we should take a trip to the States this spring, or if we should just put it off to the summer or fall. I’m less inclined to put things off these days.

And I think, yeah, the pandemic was the thing that really brought that to the forefront of my mind. We were trapped in Scotland for a couple of years and I couldn’t see my family and friends and I couldn’t do the things that I wanted to do and we couldn’t travel freely. So that’s been another motivation to use my money more now, rather than letting it sit there and accumulate more so that I could use more later.

So those are the real big things that have been at the forefront of my mind over the last few years, since my last annual update, and it is a huge mindset shift. But it’s one I needed to have, and I’m glad that I’m having it, and I’m glad I’m in the position that I’m in to enjoy it while it’s happening.

So a lot of the future content I have is going to be based around that. So again, I’m going to have a big article about learning how to spend, because I’ve learned, I think my list is up to 14 things that have really been helpful in that regard. So I’m going to publish that soon, hopefully. I’m also going to do a Perfect Life version 2.0. I have a post called The Perfect Life that I wrote even before I reached FI and I haven’t read it because I want to read it right before I write this new post, but it’s going to be funny to go back to that and see how different I’m living life now than I imagined I would have lived it back when I wrote that article and it’s going to be fun to write a new version of it to see what the future perfect life is going to be looking like now that we can build exactly the life we want. And I feel like we’re doing that and we’re getting very close to our ideal lifestyle, but here we are eight years in and still experimenting a lot and still trying to figure it out. So it’s, yeah, it’s definitely not as easy as you assume it would be.

So the only other minor thing I wanted to chat about is stock picking because, it’s obvious what the downsides to stock picking are when you’re wrong, you lose money or you make less money than you would have if you weren’t trying to pick individual stocks, but I just wanted to touch on two success stories that are still not ideal. So even if you pick the right stock, there’s two examples I have for you. And the first is I bought Nvidia back in 2012. So for anyone out there who knows what Nvidia stock has done since then, that was very early and that money would have grown to an insane amount of money had I held on to it.

But, that’s the problem with picking individual stocks.

Back then I was a software developer and I could see that graphics were going to be more important in future years. And I thought, okay, investing in the best graphic processing unit producer would make a lot of sense.

So I invested and sure enough, I think it went up maybe 20, 25 percent and I sold it and I thought I was a genius and yeah, looking back on it, yeah, it was a good investment, whatever. But had I not sold it, it would be up thousands of percent. So even though it was a success. There’s still a lot of regret there cause I sold way too early.

So that’s one example of stock picking going right, but still feeling like a failure and something that you should have done better.

And the second example is probably around the same time, I think. Apple was trading at around its cash value. So ignoring all the intellectual property it had and all the products and everything, it just was pretty much trading for what the cash it had on hand was.

So I had some money lying around at that time and I was like okay, I don’t see anything else good to invest in, so I’ll just put it into Apple. And so I’ve just left it there and the dividends have just been reinvested up until recently. I turned that off because I was like, this is just getting too big of a chunk of my portfolio.

This was in a taxable account too, which is silly back whenever I did that. So I have this huge unrealized capital gains, so I’d ideally not sell it, because I would pay a lot of tax on it. And yet it’s just becoming an increasingly bigger and bigger part of my portfolio. So even though I want my little fun portfolio size to be 5%, Apple alone is already bigger than that, not even including, Apple’s. Portion of all the index funds I own.

So anyway, so that’s another example of stock picking going right, but then ending up in a sort of difficult situation where a single stock is now a bigger percentage of my portfolio than I want it to be, but if I was to pare it down, then I would be hit with a lot of capital gains taxes.

So there’s just two examples.

Because like I said at the beginning of this, it’s easy to see how stock picking is bad when it goes wrong cause you lose money or you make less money than you could have. But when it goes right, there’s still complications. And that’s why I’m so glad that the majority of my portfolio is index funds that I plan to never sell.

And that just makes life so much easier. You just let it keep compounding. It keeps doing its thing. You’re not switching in and out. You’re not watching it. It’s just growing. And it’s just a much easier way to invest. And it’s no doubt it’s going to be more beneficial than me trying to pick stocks, even if I pick winners, which again, I don’t always, those are two examples of winners, but even then it comes with complications.

So anyway, that’s what’s been happening with me for the past few years.

Expect some more detailed and actionable posts about some of the topics I’ve discussed today coming up. Maybe not this year, maybe early next year. But if you’d prefer these updates to be in video form in the next few years, then just head to madfientist.com/youtube to follow me there. And if I get enough subscribers there, I’ll just start doing them there.

But yeah, I hope you’ve been doing well, and one other thing that I’ve been thinking about over the last few years is just how grateful I am for the Mad Fientist and for you. It’s amazing that I can just go months without publishing anything, and then I send out one email and I get all these lovely replies and suggestions and intelligent people to communicate with. And it’s incredible. It’s just another investment that seems to now be paying off.

So all those past decisions of putting the reader and listener first and not trying to sell some garbage thing that you don’t need or trying to put ads all over the place, i’m happy I made those decisions because now I feel like I’ve built up this relationship with you guys and I’m so thankful for it.

So thank you for listening, thank you for all your feedback and for being kind internet people, because I’m not sure who else out there can send out an email to a hundred thousand plus listeners or readers and then just get all these nice replies and none of the normal internet garbage that I think a lot of people have to deal with.

So thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed it, and I’ll catch you in the next one.

Related PostFifth (and Final) Annual UpdateIt's been five years since I left my full-time job so here's my fifth (and final) annual update on post-FI life!

The post Valuable Lessons from My Eighth Year of Freedom appeared first on Mad Fientist.

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Out of all the episodes of the Financial Independence Podcast, this is the one I wish I heard when I was on my journey to financial independence

Bill Perkins, author of Die with Zero, joins Chris Hutchins on the All the Hacks podcast to discuss what money is really for – maximizing net fulfillment.

This interview is incredible, so I reached out to Chris to ask if I could share it with you all, and thankfully he agreed!

Listen Nowhttps://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/madfientist/bill-perkins-interview.mp3* Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts * Download MP3 by right-clicking here

Highlights* Why you should maximize for net fulfillment rather than net worth * When is the best time to allocate money to get the most fulfillment * Why you should time bucket your experiences instead of having a bucket list * How to break out of earning-saving-investing autopilot * Why you should fear wasting your life more than running out of money

Show Links* All the Hacks Podcast * Chris Hutchins on Twitter * Die with Zero Book * Bill Perkins on Twitter

Related PostChris Hutchins - Why You Should "Retire" Before You Hit Your NumberThe founder of Grove shares important lessons he's learned as an entrepreneur and explains why you may want to quit your job before you hit your FI number!

The post Bill Perkins – Memory Dividends, Time Buckets, and Maximizing Net Fulfillment appeared first on Mad Fientist.

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To celebrate the release of JL Collins’ new book, Pathfinders, I collected all the best advice from his Financial Independence Podcast interviews!

JL has been on the show three times:

• First, back in 2012 (he was my second guest ever!)
• Second, when his hit book, The Simple Path to Wealth, was released
• Third, during the depths of the Coronavirus crash

That last interview may be my proudest moment as the Mad Fientist (I explain why during the show).

Hope you enjoy this jam-packed episode!

Listen Nowhttps://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/madfientist/jl-collins-highlights.mp3* Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts * Download MP3 by right-clicking here

Highlights* The power of FU Money and why it may be less money than you think * JL’s biggest investing mistake and what he learned from it * Why index investing is superior to active investing * Are REITs and international funds necessary * Why your house may not be a good investment * Thoughts on stock picking and actively-managed funds * What makes Vanguard unique and why it’s best for investors * The three keys to becoming wealthy * Lessons learned from Black Monday * How to prepare for the next market crash

Show Links* First Interview: JLCollinsNH – The Importance of F-You Money * Second Interview: JL Collins – The Simple Path to Wealth * Third Interview: Coronavirus Market Crash – Is This Time Different? * JL’s Website – JLCollinsNH.com * The Simple Path to Wealth * How I Lost Money in Real Estate Before it was Fashionable * Pathfinders: Extraordinary Stories of People Like You on the Quest for Financial Independence―And How to Join Them

Related PostThe Best Advice from Mr. Money MustacheTo celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Financial Independence Podcast, here are the highlights from my first guest - Mr. Money Mustache!

The post The Best Advice from JL Collins appeared first on Mad Fientist.

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Health is similar to finances in that there are many overly-complex things people say you need to do, but there are just a few simple things that actually matter.

What is the “spend less than you earn, invest in a diversified/low-fee portfolio, and leave it to grow/compound” of the health world?

That’s what today’s post is about!

Parker Hewes wrote a book called Lifelong Youth: The Simple Path to a Long & Youthful Life, and today he shares the eight health behaviors that will do the most for your longterm health and wellbeing.

If you’d prefer to listen to a podcast instead of read the article, he also recorded a short episode that you can listen to on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Take it away, Parker!

We fientists are optimizers – endlessly on the hunt for improvement, efficiency, and growth.

We look at every decision with intentionality and a dose of stoicism. This helps us successfully create a life that focuses on what matters most.

And for many of us, health is near the top of that list.

But as people who constantly strive for more information and ideas of how to improve or do things better, diving into the chaos of the health industry can create a fair amount of confusion and overwhelm.

There’s so much information in the health world that it can be difficult to know where to begin or where to focus our valuable energy and time. Like with our finances, we want to get the most bang for our buck when it comes to our decisions about health. But most of the time, the information that we find on the internet is just fluff.

I get it. Humans are attracted to new and novel things. So, when a new diet plan or exercise routine comes around promising bigger and better results, it can be enticing to promote and accept it as Gospel. But when we constantly focus on what’s new and novel, we lose sight of the fundamentals that underpin success. Also, the sad truth is that those new and novel things won’t work very well if you don’t have a foundation of health underlying it all.

So, for those of us who have ever felt lost on our health journey, floundering between various health trends and fads, this article is for you. Because health is not about finding a quick fix in hopes of solving years of problems or inefficiencies…it’s about consistent habits that make healthy behaviors instinctual and natural. And compared to the amount of advice floating around the health universe, the behaviors that truly matter for your life are relatively few.

Thankfully, before I became a financial nerd, I was a health geek. Inspired by my Mom’s struggles with food allergies as well as my education as a doctor of chiropractic, I put thousands of hours into reading research and consuming every health book available (which, in my opinion, are the best places to get your health information).

After roughly 15 years of studying, what resulted was this little book about health that I call Lifelong Youth.

Lifelong Youth means living your life to the fullest. It means you not only live longer, but those years are filled with activity, adventure, and fun.

You don’t just sit on your couch when you reach some arbitrary age, you maintain your youthful exuberance long into the golden years. People admire you as being “the most active 80-year-old they know” because you continue to do the activities you loved in your younger years. You may not have the same spritely pep in your step as your 20-year-old self, but you’re still getting out there and experiencing the world like a 20-something.

To put it in the words of the World Health Organization, you have achieved complete mental, physical, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

I define well-being, lifelong youth, and health in the same way. To put it simply, health and well-being mean having more positive life experiences than negative ones. Whether it’s through mental stimulation, social connections, or feeling physically strong and capable, the more positive experiences you can create for yourself, the greater your likelihood of achieving lifelong youth.

With this definition, you have the freedom to choose your path. There is no exact recipe or diet that will get you to a long and happy life. The best plan is the one you will stick to, which means you may decide to focus on different health behaviors at different times. As long as you are thinking about each health behavior throughout your life, recalibrating along the way, and tinkering with new ways to form habits, you will be doing it right.

Thankfully, I have created a simple list of the health behaviors that deserve your attention throughout life. These behaviors have the biggest impact on your health, so developing habits around these behaviors will help you achieve lifelong youth faster and more effectively, without wasting time floundering between the latest dietary trend and exercise fad.

One last thing, before I get into the summary of health behaviors…I want to urge you that it’s never too late to start making progress toward your health.

You can make immeasurable amounts of progress in a short amount of time, which can impact your outlook and quality of life on an exponential scale. And since the organs and tissues in your body are always regenerating, every day is an opportunity to literally grow a new and better body than yesterday.

How you choose to eat, think, move, and act today will provide the resources that your body is using to grow new cells and replace old cells. So, even if you have a history of treating your body less than ideal, you can always get back on track.

Now let’s get to it! Here are eight of the most essential health behaviors that will help you achieve lifelong youth today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life.

Health Behavior #1: Find Your Sense of PurposeWhy do you wake up in the morning? If you are like most of the longest-living people on Earth, your reason for getting up is to serve a higher purpose in life. And by having a sense of purpose, some estimates say you could lengthen your life by an average of seven years.

People with a strong sense of purpose are happier, too—your attitude about life changes when you feel like you have a reason for living. Just ask a new parent how they felt when they held their baby in their arms for the first time. Or you can ask the happiest cities in the world because a distinct feature of happy cities is that their citizens have a deep sense of purpose.

I have created a workbook to help you get more connected with your sense of purpose. Check it out at lifelongyouthbook.com/resources under the ‘Find Your Sense of Purpose’ workbook, or just download it here.

Health Behavior #2: Eat Food a Caveman Would Recognize as FoodI could go on for days about what kinds of food to eat and why. But, I could also summarize it in a few sentences:

• Eat real food, the kind a caveman would recognize as food.
• “Process” food in your own kitchen, don’t outsource it to some factory or laboratory.
• Only eat when you’re hungry.

I’m not saying you need to eat like a caveman or practice the paleolithic diet, but you should strive to eat food that is just one or two steps away from what it looked like when it was alive (the only exception being some oils and fats). And, in terms of timing, you’re better off eating only when you are actually hungry, not just out of habit, time of day, or boredom.

To further explain, when you go to the grocery store, you should recognize everything in your cart as something that was alive (or came from something alive) very recently. A red pepper, a potato, a ribeye steak, an egg, etc.

You don’t need to get caught up with whether or not a potato is better than a carrot, as long as those are the main foods you’re eating. If you’re doing it right, most of the foods in your home will have a shelf-life of less than a month.

Also, although I believe you can be healthy without feeling like you are making sacrifices, here are a few of the most offensive foods that I think you should limit from your diet:

• Corn. Corn has a high inflammatory ratio, and we tend to eat a lot of it since corn is so prevalent in processed foods and animal products (we feed livestock a lot of corn). Corn is the main reason why factory-farmed meats and animal products are more detrimental than beneficial for you. With its high level of inflammatory fats, corn fattens up cattle and makes them more susceptible to illness. Consequently, those unhealthy biomarkers transfer into your body when you eat meat and milk products from those animals
• Artificial sweeteners, fructose, and high sugar foods (aka sugary drinks). Don’t drink your sugar!
• Wheat flour. Flour tends to be overconsumed, and it creates a large glucose spike in your bloodstream which causes your body to frantically store the sugars as quickly as possible. Most often, your body’s first choice is to create a package of fat for storing the excess glucose. Getting glucose out of your blood is good for your circulatory system and nervous system.
• “Sweet” saturated fats. These include sweet fat or junk foods like baked goods, ice cream, and french fries. But also, you get similarly negative effects from a diet that contains lots of processed animal products as well as processed carbs. Animal products contain lots of saturated fat, and processed carbohydrates get converted to become a major source of excess sugar in your body. So, eating a diet high in processed carbs and high in processed meat (the typical American diet) creates more of these detrimental proteins called AGEs. These AGEs literally cause you to age faster. But don’t worry, If most of your carb intake comes from fruits and veggies (which have a lot of protective fiber), you’re in the clear.

Health Behavior #3: Drink WaterWater enables all life to exist. Considering that you, too, are alive, you probably want to put a lot of water in your body.

If we banned sugary drinks from America and everyone only drank water and tea instead, there would not be an obesity epidemic anymore. If you want to lose weight, the single greatest change you can make is to avoid drinking your calories through sodas, sugary liquor, and other sweeteners.

Also, your brain often confuses thirst with hunger. When you feel hungry, you probably need water more than you need food.

However, I admit that some beverages carry incredible benefits, too. For those of you who just can’t drink water all day, every day, try tea (green/mint/oolong/chamomile), organic red wine, or coffee in addition to your daily water requirements. Only 1-2 glasses of wine per day, though. And when I say coffee, I mean brewed coffee. Those frappe mocha cappuccino concoctions are not coffee; they are sugar in a cup. Try not drinking coffee after 12 pm either, or it will mess up your sleep habits.

Here are a few of my favorite habit-forming tips that helped me drink more water and fewer sugary drinks:

• Use habit stacking to your advantage. If you already have a routine set of habits that you perform every day, squeeze in your new habit amongst the rest (like a habit sandwich). For example, when you wake up in the morning, after brushing your teeth, drink one full glass of water while your coffee is brewing. Here, you have stacked three habits on top of each other: brushing your teeth, drinking water, and drinking coffee. Plus, this habit uses temptation bundling by pairing a habit you want to do (drink coffee) with a habit you need to do (drink water). These strategies will make your water-drinking habit easier to complete every day. Mad Fientist’s Note: Check out my interview with James Clear for more on habit stacking!
• Remove the cues of your bad habit from your environment. For example, seeing a beer in your fridge may be a cue that you “need a beer.” So, take the beers out of the fridge. You can keep drinks in the house for your friends but consider putting them in an obscure location or behind a locked door.
• Swap out your alcoholic or sugary beverage with water, red wine, tea, or coffee. Put it in an opaque cup and see if anyone notices. Or be straightforward and see if anyone cares. Besides giving you a bit of a hard time, I doubt you’ll lose any friends over this.

Health Behavior #4: Sleep Like You Mean ItEvery animal sleeps. So, for 1/3 of the day, every animal is willing to give up eating, mating, and watching out for predators.

Why do we make such costly sacrifices to sleep? Because quality sleep is like the Swiss Army knife of health behaviors. By getting better sleep, you can improve nearly every system in your body. Conversely, if you struggle with an illness or other ailment, poor sleep is likely a contributor.

We have this culture where we are proud to work long hours and sleep very little. People seem to wear poor sleep as a badge of honor. But really, poor sleep decreases productivity and increases all-cause mortality. So, without proper sleep, you’ll die sooner, get sick more often, and be worthless throughout the day.

Here are some other not-so-fun facts that might wake you up to the fact that you should prioritize sleep:

• Men who sleep 5-6 hours per night have the testosterone levels of a man who is ten years older. These underslept men also have smaller testicles, produce fewer sperm, and their sperm have more deformities and less motility. If you want a better sex life, or if you’re trying to have a baby, sleep more.
• Poor sleep messes up your hormones to promote weight gain. When you are sleep deprived, you produce more ghrelin and less leptin, making you hungrier and prone to overeating. Sleep deprivation also raises cortisol levels, which stimulates fat production.
• Your immune system is most active while you sleep. After one night of inadequate sleep (<4 hours), natural killer cell activity decreases by 70%. One night! Since natural killer cells play an essential role in stopping cancer and tumor growth, we could reasonably assume that lack of sleep increases your risk for cancer and tumors. That is why working the night shift is now considered a carcinogen.

Restful sleep is the single best thing you can do for full body health. Your body heals, repairs, and prepares for the next day while you’re sleeping. So, every time you skimp on sleep, you restrict your body from doing its main job, healing!

Plus, there is scientific proof that the more you sleep, the more attractive you appear, and the better you get at managing stress during the day. Sleep makes you better at regulating your emotions and it is a more effective antidepressant than the best drugs on the market. Sleep also alters muscle memory and increases peak force in muscles, which leads to improved reaction times, reduced injury rates, increased accuracy and speed, and decreased fatigue. In other words, your brain is practicing while you sleep! If you want to be a better athlete, artist, employee, etc., sleep like you mean it.

I am a stickler about this health behavior because it is so easy to accomplish, and few things feel better than waking up well-rested. Therefore, you now have a prescription to sleep more. And here are some tips for getting the kind of sleep you need and deserve:

• Regularity is one of the most important factors for quality sleep. Get in the habit of going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, even on weekends. To help form this habit, write down an easy activity that will at least get you started. For example, “At 10:00 pm, I will have my pajamas on, and I will untuck the corner of my bedsheets.” You technically don’t have to go to bed, but you at least form the habit of being ready for bed at the same time every night.
• Create a bedtime ritual. Like shooting a free throw, having a consistent routine will prepare your brain for rest so that you will fall asleep easier. Try reading or listening to a book for 10-30 minutes. Maybe pillow-talk with your significant other is a calming routine for you. Choose an activity that is not very “active.” You want to wind down, not get riled up. To help form this habit, choose an activity that is very easy to complete. For example, use the two-minute rule. Read for 2 minutes before going to bed. Seriously, after two minutes, stop reading. If you are enjoying the book, of course, you can continue, but as soon as you hit the point when it feels like work, just stop. Sleep instead.
• When the temperature of your room is a couple of degrees colder at night, you sleep better. The optimal sleeping temperature for most people is 65o. Also, make sure your bedroom is completely dark. Any bit of light can reduce your sleep quality or wake you up unnecessarily.
• Shut your screens off at least one hour before bed. Blue light from electronic devices can switch off melatonin production and make it harder to fall asleep. Wind down with a book, meditation, or a creative activity instead. Alternatively, you can wear blue blocker glasses or turn on ‘night-time’ mode on your devices.
• No caffeine after noon. Caffeine blocks your production of adenosine (the sleepiness hormone). Adenosine accumulates throughout the day and peaks after 16 hours of wakefulness. If you drink caffeine after noon, your brain won’t generate enough adenosine, and you won’t be very sleepy at night.
• Try not to eat within three hours of going to bed. Eating causes blood to rush to your gut instead of your brain. But your brain needs lots of blood to run your glymphatic system (the cerebral power wash). So, at least once a week, prioritize sleep by eating early and getting quality rest.
• You don’t sit around the dinner table waiting to get hungry, so don’t sit in your bed waiting to get sleepy. If your mind is racing, spend less time in bed. You want your brain to associate the bed with sleep, not a wandering mind. Instead, sit or lay somewhere else in your house until you start getting sleepy again. Try meditating or taking your mind on a pleasant walk.
• Alcohol doesn’t help you sleep better; it just sedates your brain. That’s why people feel so tired after a night of drinking. Their sleep is fragmented and shallow, so they wake up feeling unrefreshed and unrestored, even if they slept over 10 hours.

Health Behavior #5: Move Naturally and PlayDo you ever dread going to the gym? I sometimes do, because working out often feels like work; it’s just not that fun for me.

Thankfully, you don’t have to live at the gym to be healthy. If you are like most people, you aren’t trying to be a pro athlete or an Olympic powerlifter. Your goal is to be generally fit, so you can keep doing the activities you enjoy for the rest of your life. You can achieve this goal and have fun along the way; you don’t have to suffer through the same old workout routine.

Also, being a mover is more important than being an “exerciser.” If you have an active lifestyle that keeps you moving for most of the day, you’ll look and feel better than the desk worker who spends two hours at the gym after work. The longest-living people on Earth rarely go to the gym, but they stay fit and healthy because their lifestyle is a constant expression of movement and exercise.

Granted, weight training is a useful tool — the WHO recommends at least two days of weight training per week. But lifting weights doesn’t have to be a sterile, lifeless routine of sets and reps. If you enjoy weightlifting, be my guest. But if not, there are plenty of other ways to make exercise fun and challenging at the same time.

Besides, being an “adult” and having “responsibilities” does not mean you have to stop playing, imagining, and exploring. These qualities are what make our species successful. In the words of Todd Hargrove, “Play is not about doing things that are immature, frivolous, or trivial. It is about getting absorbed in an activity that is intrinsically motivating.” Play means you practice and fiddle around with different ways of doing things until it falls into place. You tinker and fine-tune until it feels right.

So, whether you are at the gym or out in nature, play around with your movements. By tinkering and fine-tuning, you’ll start to enjoy exercise because your workout routine will look less like work and routine. Pretty soon, you’ll be craving activity, and fitness will just come naturally.

If being creative with your fitness doesn’t come as naturally to you, try these life hacks for integrating more movement into your life:

• Change your environment to prioritize movement and play over lounging around. For example, push your couch far away from the TV and put a mat on the ground instead. You are more likely to sit on the floor and practice mobility if you have space for it. While watching TV, you can play around with different positions and stretches, which is great for movement health and long-term mobility. Also, getting up and down off the floor is a great predictor of longevity.
• Make sports equipment, exercise equipment, toys, and games easily accessible. When exercise is more convenient, you are more likely to do it. Meanwhile, make sedentary activities less accessible and out of sight. Consider putting your TV behind cabinet doors and hiding the remote. Every extra step you add will make your bad habit more inconvenient, and you’ll be less likely to consume it.
• Use gateway habits. Instead of saying, “I will go for a run every day,” say, “I will put on my running shoes at x:xx o’clock every day.” Smaller habits are less ominous, so you are more likely to maintain them.
• Use the two-minute rule — downscale your habit into a two-minute time frame. Once the two minutes are up, you are done for the day. If you want to keep going, you are welcome to, but you don’t have to. Never miss twice, though. If you miss one day, make sure you keep the habit alive tomorrow.
• Join a club, exercise group, or sports league. Creating a culture around your desired behavior helps you stay motivated.

If you’d like a little more guidance on the type of activities that will help you live your best, most active life, follow these activity guidelines:

| Guideline | Description | Examples | | 5x/wk or 150min/wkMove and be active (moderate physical activity) | Moderate activities feel like work, but not in an unpleasant way. Your heart rate is elevated to a point where it would be challenging to sing but easy to talk (60-80% of your max heart rate). | Brisk walking/HikingGardening/YardworkHousehold choresJoggingCycling/Mountain bikingSwimmingPlaying around (e.g., climb, swing, chase, jump, crawl) | | 1-2x/wkDo something heavy | Whether you do these lifts in a gym or outdoors, make sure you expose yourself to all types of movements, not just one or two.Focus on proper form. Quality and control matter more than sets and reps. And remember, have fun! Play around with different movements and make it a game or competition. | Overhead push (e.g., chest/shoulder press)Overhead Pull (e.g., pull up, cable pull-down)Horizontal Push (e.g., push up, bench press)Horizontal Pull (e.g., rows) SquatsHip Hinge (e.g., deadlift)Lunges | | 1x/wk20 minutesDo something vigorous to max out your heart rate | Vigorous activity feels hard and requires willpower to continue. Your breathing rate is high enough that you cannot have a conversation. | Sprint a hill five timesHIIT WorkoutsSprint RowingSprint bikingLap swimming for speed | | PeriodicallyPractice coordination, balance, and ROM | Focus on a movement that you are not very good at and do those movements more often. After all, you are only as strong as your weakest link. | Ankle mobility exercisesWalk on an unstable surface (e.g., slackline, 2×4, curb)YogaPlay sports |

Health Behavior #6: Find Your TribeSocializing is one of the most dependable means of improving your health and happiness. The happiest people on Earth socialize at least eight hours a day, and the world’s longest-living cultures spend much of their after-work time in a social setting.

However, when you hang out with your friends, try to do healthy activities. Instead of drinking and sitting around a table, you might choose to do movement-based activities like hiking or playing yard games. Behaviors are contagious, so if you choose to move, play, and socialize all at the same time, everyone will maximize their health and take another step toward Lifelong Youth. If you want some ideas to spark your creativity, check out the ‘Movement Games’ addendum found at lifelongyouthbook.com/resources. Or, download is here.

To help you prioritize social time, consider joining a club that meets regularly. Some people need a little nudge to hang out with friends, and it helps to have a scheduled time in their calendar. And when you greet your friends and family, try approaching them in three ways: touch (e.g., hug), words of affirmation, and eye contact. This practice helps build stronger relationships and establishes a deeper connection.

Finally, if you’re worried, answer these questions to determine the quality of your friendships and their impact on your health.

• Do your friends smoke?
• Are your friends overweight because of unhealthy behaviors?
• Do they drink more than two glasses of alcohol per day?
• Do they eat an unhealthy diet?
• Are they excited about life, or are they prone to complaints and negativity?
• Does their idea of recreation include watching TV and sitting around, or would they prefer to go outside and be active?
• Are they curious about the world?
• Do they listen as well as talk?
• Are they interested in trying new things, or are they tied to a consistent routine?
• Do they engage with the community and encourage your engagement?
• Do you feel better or happier when you are around them?

Health Behavior #7: Embrace DiscomfortThis may be my favorite behavior from a philosophical perspective.

With a mindset that pushes me to embrace discomfort, I believe you can accomplish anything. That’s because embracing discomfort (or said another way, voluntarily exposing yourself to a small amount of stress) increases your adaptability and resiliency as a human. Those two words, adaptability and resiliency, characterize exactly what it takes to live longer, healthier, and happier. And by voluntarily exposing yourself to small doses of a stressor (and doing so in a controlled way), you train your body to overcome any stressor, even the kind that catches you off-guard and occurs at the worst possible time.

With an ‘embrace discomfort’ mindset, you become the master of your stress, not the victim of it. And realizing you have control over outcomes, your emotions, and even your physiology (your body’s internal responses) is a philosophy that will change your life forever.

Now, the trick to embracing discomfort is figuring out the proper dosage. For every bout of stress that you voluntarily impose on yourself, you will need to play the role of Goldilocks and assess whether you are adding too much or too little discomfort onto yourself. Even though I wish I could give you a universal prescription for how to impose just the right amount of stress, I sadly cannot. Everybody has a different stress tolerance, and your tolerance level is always changing depending on your behaviors, your environment, the stages of your life, and the other stressors you were exposed to today. What I can prescribe, though, is an intentional program of stress exposure that focuses on mindfully assessing how you feel and respond to every instance of voluntary stress exposure.

For example, sun-tanning is a method of voluntarily exposing your skin to the stress of the sun. If you’re doing it right, you will stay in the sun for just the right amount of time so that you get a tan without getting burnt. However, to accomplish this, you need to be mindful of how your skin is reacting to the sun as time goes on. We all know that you can’t just sit in the sun all day and expect perfect bronzing. You have to build up your tan incrementally. If you try to do it all in one day, you won’t be very happy tomorrow.

The same idea is true for any stressor. Each time you expose yourself to controlled stress, pay attention to how your mind and body feel afterward. Could you have pushed a little harder in that workout yesterday, or did you go a little too hard, and you are sore for three days instead of one? Did you feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks on your list today? Did it paralyze you from getting things done? Or were you in the zone, cranking through your tasks with focus and efficiency?

For some behaviors, it will be easy to see the results of too much or too little stress. When you get sunburned, it is obvious that you stayed outside for too long. For most stressors, though, this is not the case. Your behaviors won’t always give you immediate feedback. This is why it’s important to lean into discomfort. Embrace it. Do things that are difficult, challenging, and a little bit uncomfortable. Your body likes to be challenged and pushed, and you are capable of more than you think. When you allow your body to adapt and grow, you’ll be surprised how much progress you can make in a short amount of time.

Exposure to hot and cold temperatures are two examples of the way I embrace discomfort. Incrementally embracing the extremes of hot and cold can have widespread effects on your physical and mental health, and these tactics have been utilized for thousands of years. I’m sure you’ve heard of these methods before, they include cold water immersion (aka cold plunge, ice baths, etc.) and sauna (infrared, dry sauna, wet sauna, etc.). I won’t get into the specific benefits of each method, but you can check out my book and really nerd out if you want to. Instead, I’ll just give you some tips on how to integrate these methods into your life.

1. Do things outside, in all types of weather. The easiest way to embrace discomfort is to step out of your climate-controlled box and experience the real world. Remember, there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear.
2. View stress from a different perspective. Think of demanding tasks as challenges rather than threats. That way, you will no longer be the victim of stress but the master of it. Instead of just “dealing” with discomfort, you’ll embrace it, welcome it, and seek it out.
3. Cold tip: At the end of your shower, turn on the cold for 30 seconds. Yes, it will suck at first, but eventually, you may enjoy the cold. It will wake you up better than a cup of coffee, and you’ll feel warmer when coming out of a cold shower (no more shivering under your towel). As an alternative to cold showers, put an ice pack on the back of your neck for 30 minutes every night. In adults, brown fat resides across your shoulders and down the spine. By placing an ice pack at the base of your neck, you will stimulate brown fat production. This strategy will not work as well as cold water immersion, but it is more tolerable for most people.
4. Hot tip: If you have the luxury, go back and forth between a hot sauna and a cold shower or cold pool. This creates a kind of pumping effect in your blood vessels, which helps clear away toxins and debris.

Health Behavior #8: Practice SpiritualityYou don’t need to be religious to practice spirituality. No matter what you believe, the act of sharing your beliefs with others will add to your health and happiness. This is partly because spiritual gatherings help foster social ties. But spirituality also allows for quiet reflection and mindfulness, which relieves stress. Here are some more reasons why practicing spirituality is good for you:

• Every time you focus your attention on something, your brain rewires itself by establishing new neural connections. With meditation and mindfulness, you often draw your attention toward positive emotions like kindness, love, and conscientiousness. In doing so, you literally reshape the structure of your brain. So, you aren’t just ‘faking it ‘til you make it,’ you reshape it ‘til you make it!
• Meditation also helps deactivate the genes associated with inflammation, which is implicated in almost every chronic disease that affects our aging population.
• After a stress-triggering event, meditation, mindfulness, or quiet repose is one of the best ways to calm yourself down again. In other words, mindfulness helps empty your cup of stress so that it is less likely to overflow and cause damage.

I refer to spirituality as meditation and mindfulness above, but any faith system will likely have similar effects. You could substitute meditation and mindfulness with the words ‘prayer’ and ‘reflection’ if that is what makes you happy.

Either way, I urge you to give your brain some downtime. Unplug for a little while every day, and don’t do anything. Your brain’s default mode is still active during this time, and it is working on problem-solving and creating new ideas. So, even if taking a break seems unproductive, you are more productive in the end.

Finally, a quick tip on the practice of spirituality. Whether it’s prayer, meditation, reflection, or whatever you choose to call it, focusing on your breathing will be impactful and beneficial for your mind and body. A standard breathing cadence for relaxation is to breathe in through your nose for five seconds, hold for seven seconds, and exhale for ten seconds through a relaxed jaw. Exhaling with a slow, long breath will stimulate parasympathetic activity and tell your body to rest, protect, and repair itself.

ConclusionNow, I know it seems like I just added 8 things to your list of to-dos. But, instead of trying to tackle all 8 steps at once, spend some time figuring out which step seems possible to tackle at this point in your life. Similar to knocking out debt with the debt snowball tactic, start with a small, easier win. Then, you can build up steam toward the bigger tasks and behavior changes that may seem a little more daunting right now. Once you get acquainted with the habit formation process, you’ll notice that it becomes easier to accomplish big changes. And as you learned through a few examples in this article, breaking down the behavior change into small, manageable doses will go a long way.

I know you can do this. At the very least, I hope you’re motivated and inspired by the plethora of healthy options you have to choose from. Health does not have to be the suffer-fest you’ve been conditioned to think it is. There is a lifetime of healthy foods and activities that you can explore without ever getting bored. The world is your playground, so get out there, play on it, and stay young along the way.

P.S. There is so much more information in the book about how to form habits, stay motivated, and apply these behaviors more effectively in your life. Plus, I’ve provided a ton of free resources for you on my website: lifelongyouthbook.com/resources. Enjoy!

About the WriterParker Hewes is an adventurer, chiropractor, soccer coach, and author. He loves mountain sports like skiing, biking, rock climbing, backpacking, trail running, and obstacle course racing, which is why his home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming is the perfect playground. Most recently, he’s been humbled to have gotten called back to compete on American Ninja Warrior this year! You can watch him on TV when Season 15 airs. Parker also enjoys consuming endless content in the financial independence space. He plans to be financially independent by age 40. He is also in the process of creating an educational platform about health, wealth, and happiness. So be on the lookout for the Getting Gooder podcast, blog, and book series!

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If you want to create your ideal FI lifestyle by investing in real estate, learn from Jillian and Chad why "Small and Mighty" may be best!

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This post is a collaboration with Nick Maggiulli from Of Dollars and Data.

I read Nick’s book, Just Keep Buying, and the thing I loved most was how he backed up all his arguments with data.

I was chatting to him on Twitter about why I enjoyed his book, and he said, “If you ever want to collaborate on something (or want me to run a simulation of something for you), let me know.”

I had a topic I thought would be perfect to collaborate on, and this article is the result.

I’ve always had a problem with the 4% rule for early retirement.

It’s not because it’s bad or wrong.

It’s because it’s not for early retirement.

The 4% Rule: Why It’s Not Ideal for Early RetirementMy biggest issue is that it doesn’t account for the flexibility of most early-retirees.

It’s for standard retirement, and “traditional” retirees in their 70s or 80s aren’t likely to have as much lifestyle or spending flexibility as someone in their 30s or 40s.

By the time someone has reached the end of their career in their 70s, it’s likely they:

• Have settled on a level of spending they want (or need) to maintain
• Have no desire (or ability) to get another job, if the shit hits the fan
• Are bound to a particular area (or even house)
• Have a high percentage of their spending going towards essential expenses, like food and healthcare
• Are more sensitive to inflation (due to a high percentage of essential expenses)

Compare that to someone in their 30s or 40s who retires early and has:

• A more flexible lifestyle with less fixed expenses
• The ability to pick up part-time or full-time work, if necessary
• The freedom and/or desire to live in beautiful but cheap places, like Southeast Asia or South America, to reduce expenses without reducing their quality of life
• A high percentage of their spending going towards discretionary expenses (e.g. travel, dining, drinks with friends, etc.)

The 4% rule doesn’t account for any of that flexibility.

It assumes you’re going to spend 4% of your portfolio’s value in your first year of retirement, and then increase that spending with inflation every year after.

Speaking of inflation…

What About Fixed Costs?In a recent Money with Katie episode with the guy who created the 4% rule, William Bengen, Katie brings up the point that 4% is already conservative because of the way it treats inflation.

It assumes you’re going to inflation adjust ALL of your spending every year, whether inflation impacts every expense or not.

If you have a 30-year-fixed mortgage, for example, your biggest expense may not be impacted by inflation at all!

Other Reasons the 4% Rule is ConservativeI recommend you listen to the entire Money With Katie interview, but here are a few other reasons from that episode that 4% may be overly conservative:

• The 4% rule was originally the 4.15% rule, but it was rounded down by mainstream media because 4% was easier to say/remember
• The 4.15% rule is now actually the 4.8% rule, based on Bill Bengen’s updated analysis (which includes additional asset classes)

But the Money Has to Last Longer?So the 4% rule is conservative for a 30-year retirement, but don’t we need to pick a lower withdrawal rate for a 40+ year early retirement?

Yes, but not as low as you may think.

We explored this topic in depth during my interview with Michael Kitces (still one of my most-popular episodes of all time).

If you want to add 10 years to a standard retirement, you should decrease your initial withdrawal rate by ~0.6%.

And surprisingly, a portfolio that survives for 40 years is likely to survive for 50 or 60+ years (see my post on Sequence of Returns Risk to learn why).

Are We Back Where We Started?So if the 4% rule is actually the 4.8% rule, but we need to decrease that by ~0.6%, aren’t we back to roughly where we started (i.e. 4%)?

Yes, but we haven’t accounted for early-retirement flexibility yet!

And that’s what this whole post is about.

Incorporating Flexibility Into Your Withdrawal StrategyBefore Nick started crunching the numbers, we went back and forth to figure out the best way to factor flexibility into the withdrawal rate, and here’s what we came up with…

Discretionary Spending PercentageFirst, figure out the percentage of your spending that goes towards discretionary expenses.

Discretionary expenses are any expenses you feel you could do without, if necessary.

Calculate New Withdrawal RateOnce you have your discretionary spending percentage, find it on the following table and then pick a comfortable success rate in that column to find your withdrawal rate (the table assumes an 80/20 stock/bond portfolio allocation).

Or, if you have a FI Laboratory account, you can use the calculator I created to compute your withdrawal rate using this method.

If you don’t have a FI Laboratory account, you can get one for free here!

Withdrawal RulesNow, you should have a withdrawal rate that is higher than 4%, so you could retire sooner (because a higher withdrawal rate means you’ll need to save up less money to cover your annual expenses)!

There’s no free lunch though (you can’t just withdraw more every year and expect your portfolio to last as long as it would have with the 4% rule), so there are some simple rules you have to follow for this strategy to work:

1. While in a bear market (>20% off of highs), withdraw $0 for discretionary spending
2. When the market is in a correction (>10% below highs), withdraw 50% of your discretionary budget
3. All other times, withdraw your entire discretionary budget

Let’s see how this would work with an example…

Discretionary Withdrawal Rate Example ScenarioLet’s say a retiree has $1M in an 80/20 portfolio.

Using the 4% rule, that would allow for $40,000 in spending in year one, adjusting for inflation each year thereafter. With this portfolio and withdrawal strategy, there is a 96.55% chance of success (across all 40 year periods from 1926-2022).

But can we keep the same probability of success while withdrawing more with our new withdrawal method?

Yes, if the retiree follows the rules…

If they have 50% of their spending as discretionary spending, they can withdraw 5.5% (instead of 4%) and still have a 98.28% probability of success (across all 40 year periods from 1926-2022)!

Using our $1M portfolio as an example, in year one they would withdraw $27,500 as essential spending (half of the 5.5%) and then withdraw:

• $27,500 as discretionary (if the market is <10% from its highs)
• $13,750 as discretionary (if the market is >10% off its highs, but <20% off its highs)
• $0 as discretionary (if the market is >20% off its highs)

While the essential spending adjusts upwards with inflation every year, the discretionary spending does not move with inflation (research shows that retirement spending tends to decrease over time, so this gradual decrease in real spending power should be manageable, while also ensuring essential expenses are always covered).

So in year two, after a year of 5% inflation, this person would withdraw $28,875 for their essential expenses and then either $27,500, $13,750, or $0 for their discretionary expenses (depending on the past year’s market performance).

Using this method, you’d have roughly the same probability of success over 40 years and, in most years (i.e. good years), you could withdraw more money!

Or, you could use this method to retire years earlier…

In this example, the person would need to wait until they hit $1 million to retire to cover their $40k of annual expenses, using the 4% rule.

If they use this new method instead though, with a 5.5% withdrawal rate, they’d only need to save up $727,273 to withdraw the same $40k for expenses (although, they’d need to cut back on their discretionary spending in down years).

Other Benefits of this MethodThis method allows you to spend more and/or retire earlier, which is great, but it also comes with additional benefits…

Buffett’s quote about inheritance applies nicely to early retirement – “A very rich person should leave his kids rich enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.”

I’ve seen a bunch of early retirees (myself included) race to the FI finish line, only to be left disoriented when confronted with the fact that money is no longer a motivating factor in their lives (and therefore, they could do “nothing”).

Having this discretionary withdrawal strategy seems to solve a lot of the problems I see with full FI:

• It encourages you to focus on reducing your fixed costs (i.e. the expenses that really matter) but lets you relax with your fun/discretionary spending.
• In down years, you’re forced to reevaluate your discretionary spending (so you don’t just keep mindlessly spending on things that you may not provide value anymore)
• It gives you a pot of money specifically for discretionary spending, so you’ll hopefully be more likely to spend on fun things (rather than just keep saving and saving, like I did).
• When you reach your number, you have enough to do “anything” but not enough to do “nothing” (unless you’re happy with $0 of discretionary spending during bear markets).
• Money is still a motivating factor in your life, because you may want to have some income coming in during down years
• Since your spending/lifestyle is changing year-to-year, you’ll hopefully appreciate things more (rather than just get into a routine of spending/doing the same things)

What if my porfolio’s performance differs from the market?Just because the overall stock market is tanking, that doesn’t mean my portfolio is down 20%…shouldn’t the discretionary budget be calculated based on what my own portfolio is doing?

We thought about this, but we liked the simplicity of using the market as a guide. All the financial headlines will be screaming, “Bear market!!” when the overall market is down 20%, but nobody cares what your portfolio is doing.

Plus, the time to tighten your belt and be more cautious is when there’s fear in the streets. When the overall market is in a big correction, the real economy may also start to falter. That would make it harder to find work, if necessary. So it makes sense to tighten your budget when the overall economy is on shaky ground.

What if I don’t want to cut back so much during down years?That’s the beauty of the strategy…you get to decide your discretionary percentage.

So if your fixed/essential expenses are 50% of your budget, but you know you want at least 15% to spend on discretionary spending to enjoy life (even in down years), then just treat 65% of your budget as essential and say that 35% is discretionary. You’ll have to work/save longer, but if that results in an early retirement that you enjoy, it’s worth it.

What do you think?There seem to be a lot of benefits to thinking differently about your essential and discretionary expenses when it comes to early retirement, but what do you think?

Do you like this method, or is it too complicated/risky? Are there any other benefits/downsides I didn’t mention? Let me know in the comments below!

Just Keep BuyingOnce again, huge thanks to Nick for taking the time to run all these simulations!

I probably wouldn’t have gotten around to writing about this topic, had it not been for Nick’s kind offer. So if you liked this post, be sure to thank him by checking out his excellent blog (Of Dollars and Data) and book (Just Keep Buying)!

The post The Problem with the 4% Rule (and Why You Could Retire Even Sooner) appeared first on Mad Fientist.

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I love beautifully-designed software.

I love powerful/flexible financial software.

It’s been a while since I’ve found an application that’s both, but that’s exactly what I have for you today…

ProjectionLab is the most beautiful financial planning tool I’ve ever seen.

And, it was created specifically for people pursuing FIRE, so it’s also the most-useful planning tool I’ve found for FI!

The indie developer who built it is here today to tell you all about it.

Take it away, Kyle!

Hey everyone, I’m Kyle.

When I finished undergrad back in 2015, I never thought that just 8 years later I would have achieved financial independence by 30… and I was right! I have not

But I have at least started getting my act together. Thanks in large part to blogs, books, and podcasts like The Mad Fientist, The Simple Path to Wealth, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Psychology of Money, Financial Freedom, and many other favorites.

During my early years in “the real world,” I rarely thought about money. Sure, I knew a few rules of thumb – save some for retirement, don’t spend an exorbitant amount on rent. But mostly, I would daydream about when I’d have enough PTO for another vacation to go scuba diving and make travel videos.

But what accompanied those daydreams was a gnawing feeling that there should be more to life than the classic American pattern of working until you’re too old to enjoy it.

Does sacrificing the best hours of your best days of your best years to meetings, briefings, and bureaucracy really add up to your best life?

Then I discovered FI community thought leaders like Pete Adeney, J.L. Collins, Vicki Robin, and The Mad Fientist. Their message hit me like a freight train. I knew right away that I needed to take more active control of my financial future. And that if I did, someday I might eventually have the freedom to be my best self all the time, not just a few weeks a year.

I dove head-first down the FI rabbit hole. I learned about leanFIRE, fatFIRE, regular FIRE, coastFI, Barista FIRE, and everything in between.

But something was missing. Theory is nice, but I wanted to really see how this was going to work. I wanted a hands-on and visual way to map out all the options and explore the trade-offs between different life plans. So, I went looking for a long-term planning and forecasting tool. Something modern, fluid, nuanced, and actually fun to use.

[ Cut to black.]

So I made a thing[Camera fades back in. Blur effect. Narrator wakes up in a daze, trying to shake off two years of caffeine-powered nights and weekends.]

After a couple thousand hours of coding, let me introduce ProjectionLab!

I couldn’t find the perfect long-term financial planning tool, so I decided to build one

With ProjectionLab, you can create beautiful financial plans with a level of nuance and flexibility that exceeds the standard online retirement calculators. You can run Monte Carlo simulations, backtest on historical data, review detailed analytics for estimated taxes, and plan how to live life on your terms. And with some luck, reduce anxiety around your finances.

There is a free sandbox, if you just want to hop in and see how it works. It does not ask to link your financial accounts. You do not have to create an account to try it, and it works pretty well for international scenarios.

It respects your data and will not try to upsell you on advisory services. It’s just a thing I made that you might like

Okay, but who am I?I am a software engineer from Boston. Originally, I grew up in coastal Maine.

I did not expect to one day become a “Masshole” as they are, um, affectionately called back home … but here I am!

And I did turn 30 this year. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always had a passion for making things. I started coding video games in middle school, and mastered the art of dodging suggestions to “go play baseball instead”. Over the years, I’ve always had a personal project or two on the side.

The way that coding can enable you to take creative ideas and manifest them in the real world will always feel a little like magic to me. And with side projects, it’s refreshing to be free of the constraints that frequently make writing enterprise software a drag. No stand-up meetings, no sprint retrospectives, no changing requirements, and no funding to worry about!

ProjectionLab started as one of these creative outlets. And it has grown into a lot more.

TL;DR. What can you do with this?Here is a quick summary:

– Build nuanced models of your whole life

– Plan separately or as a couple

– Define what terms like financial independence mean to you

– Model complex decisions based on goals like achieving FI, taking time off for travel, home ownership, or starting a rental empire

– Create multiple plans and compare them

– Visualize projected cash-flow with Sankey diagrams

– Review estimated taxes and effective tax brackets for each kind of income

– Apply granular controls for how you expect accounts/income/expenses/inflation/etc to change over time

– Experiment with Roth Conversions, 72t (SEPP) Distributions, and other advanced strategies

– Model international scenarios

– Backtest on historical data and run Monte Carlo simulations to analyze the spectrum of possible outcomes

– Track your actual progress over time

– Control where your data is saved, with no link to your real financial accounts

What does FI mean to you?Think about the future you hope for. What are some of the milestones along the way? One of the first touch points when you create a plan in ProjectionLab is the milestone system. It helps to capture the big-picture goals you care about. And since you’re reading The Mad Fientist, chances are that financial independence is one of them.

But what does FI mean when you break it down? People have different definitions, and I wanted the milestone system to accommodate that. For instance, do you only consider yourself FI at a specific multiple of expenses and a certain liquidity-to-debt ratio? No problem: you can create a milestone with additional criteria.

I’ve put some thought into making milestones flexible and customizable. They can be anything from retirement or purchasing a home, to reaching your personal definition of financial independence, having kids, moving to a new state or country, switching careers, going part-time, etc. They can even have tax consequences.

And most importantly: you can use them as a framework to help scaffold the rest of your plan and control when various events should start and end (income streams, expenses, asset purchases, etc.)

Okay. Whatever. Is that just marketing speak, or is this actually useful? How about we build a scenario together and find out!

Let’s build a plan togetherToday, we’ll be an early-career married couple with student loans, currently renting, wanting to have kids someday, and we just found out about this thing called “financial independence.”

Let’s see if we can get a sense for where we currently stand, where we are headed, and how to plan a life we’ll love.

Once we cruise through the setup wizard, here is how things are looking within the Current Finances section. I will also take the liberty to point out that there is a dark mode, if you’re into that

Our current net worth is negative, due to the student loans, but we’re going to get things moving in the right direction soon.

To make projections for the future, let’s create a plan and define growth rate and inflation assumptions for the deterministic planning mode. We will add milestones, income streams, expenses, and cash-flow priorities, choose our tax configuration, set a portfolio-level stock/bond allocation over time, and define a drawdown sequence.

In the interest of time, let’s gloss over that setup process.

The baseline scenarioTo keep things approachable, this is what a basic version of our plan might look like.

It includes two kids, straightforward career progression, contributions to some employer-sponsored retirement accounts, buying a car every 8 years, medical expenses increasing later in life, and some unexpected emergencies occurring every 15 years (and scaling up a bit each time).

In this case, we will define Financial Independence as a milestone that occurs when net worth reaches 25 times expenses.

And we will configure retirement to occur once we reach it.

Then, we can use these milestones as bindings when we create other events. For instance, here is a W2 income stream configured to end at the retirement milestone.

We can also add milestones for the kids, and bind expenses to those. This way, any tweaks we make later to our milestones will propagate to everything else in the plan automatically.

Cash flow visualizationSo, what exactly is happening in one of these simulated years? The sankey chart in the cash flow tab can help with that.

We can see how earned income (less withholding) flows into the plan, along with employer match/contributions to tax-advantaged accounts, and how these inflows are used to pay for expenses, service debt, contribute towards investments, and/or build an emergency fund based on our cash flow priorities.

Tax analyticsWe can also use the tax analytics module to drill down on specific years and examine how the various kinds of estimated taxes and their underlying brackets apply to each income type.

Within our plan’s tax settings, we’ve enabled US tax estimation:

And here’s a look at our projected future income and the effective tax brackets that apply to each type.

You can plot marginal and effective tax rates over time, and also see how extra hypothetical dollars of each kind would be taxed.

Monte Carlo simulationBut can we expect the market to provide a consistent return every year? Nope. And our plan shouldn’t either.

So far, we have just been playing around in deterministic mode and assuming a consistent 5.34% real rate of return.

We could choose to explore a specific historical sequence, or create custom return/inflation curves to model a scenario of our own design.

But what if we really want to get a better sense for the full spectrum of possible outcomes? Time to visit the Chance of Success tab and run some Monte Carlo simulations!

Based on 950 trials using historical S&P 500 returns, dividends, and US inflation data, here’s how things are looking so far:

Pretty solid chance of success! And many potential outcomes that actually exceed our future needs by a large margin.

But, is the life we’ve modeled up to this point really the one we want?

Reaching FI in our early to mid 50s after nearly three decades of full-time work is a great accomplishment. But is there any way we could buy our freedom even earlier?

The dream planLet’s create a second plan and find some ways to get creative. We’ll start by cloning and renaming the original.

Last time, we allowed some lifestyle inflation to drive up our annual spending over time. Here, let’s keep that under control and build a more granular model for how we think our essential living expenses may evolve.

We will also stop renting and buy a house for $500k around the time Kid #1 is born. Then, we’ll drop down to 50% part-time work at age 40, and we’ll both attempt to fully retire from our W2 jobs at a fixed age of 45.

What does all that do to our chance of success? Okay, so version 1 of the Dream Plan is not looking great.

Hmmm.. but what if one of us works hard over the next couple years to land a job paying 25% more, and we avoid inflating our expenses to match?

That brings us closer to a 50% success rate.

And what about the extra time we’ll have during part-time work and then early retirement? Maybe we have some hobbies or passion projects we have always wanted to try to grow into a side business?

Let’s model one that starts generating some revenue during that period of part-time work.

That extra income smooths out those early years after retirement, and brings the success rate back to a more reasonable level near 75%.

Want to learn more?At this point, we have just scratched the surface of what you can model in ProjectionLab.

If you feel like taking it for a spin, you may want to dig further into account types and liquidity settings, stock/bond allocation over time, international templates and tax config, patterns of asset purchases + sales, drawdown order, rental properties, progress tracking… Okay, I’ll stop now

Here are a few links with more info:

• The tool: ProjectionLab
• Podcast appearance on The FI Show: http://thefishow.com/kyle
• A video review by Rob Berger

You can run basic simulations for free with the sandbox version, and you can use this coupon code for 10% off the premium version: MADFIENTIST-10

Thanks a lot for sharing, Kyle!

Since I think this is the most-useful (and beautiful) FI planning tool available, I added a permanent link to the sidebar of the FI Laboratory, so that you can easily run projections when you’re updating your FI numbers.

Head over to ProjectionLab now, run a few simulations, and see if you’re as impressed by the software as I am!

The post ProjectionLab – Beautiful and Powerful Financial-Planning Software for FIRE appeared first on Mad Fientist.

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On today’s episode of the Financial Independence Podcast, I welcome back Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You to Be Rich!

I needed someone to come on the show to provide some tough love and Ramit was the only person for the job.

As Ramit mentioned during our last interview, FIRE people are great at knowing what NOT to spend on but we’re not good at knowing what to spend on.

Spending is going to be a big focus on the Mad Fientist this year and I can’t think of a better way to kick off this discussion than by getting yelled at by Ramit so hope you enjoy it!

Listen Nowhttps://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/madfientist/i-will-teach-you-to-be-rich-interview.mp3* Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts * Download MP3 by right-clicking here

Highlights* Why we doubled our annual spending (and was it worth it) * What Ramit did to make me get all clammy and uncomfortable * Why pay less when you can pay more * How to imagine your own rich life * Why you should start wasting some money at a certain point

Show Links* I Will Teach You to Be Rich * I Will Teach You to Be Rich Podcast * Episode 16 – “We’re worth $8 million but I comparison shop for strawberries” * Episode 40 – “We’re worth $5 million, but my wife nearly canceled our trip to save $200” * Money Coaching with Ramit Sethi * Ramit on Twitter | Instagram | TikTok

Full TranscriptMad Fientist: Ramit, thank you so much for being here again. I really appreciate it.

Ramit Sethi: Thanks for having me back.

Mad Fientist: So, it’s been over three years since our last interview, which is crazy. It seems like yesterday. And you’ve been really busy with some new stuff since then, which I’m excited to talk to you about. But there’s one particular topic that we touched on back in our first interview that I really want to dive into today because I think it’s a huge problem in the FIRE community and it’s a problem that I know I have, and it is the fact that FIRE people aren’t very good at knowing what to spend on.

We’re great at knowing what not to spend on, as you mentioned in our interview last time, but we’re not good at knowing what to spend on. And since we talked, I’ve been really working hard at this over the last couple of years and I want to talk through that. But you are the perfect man to push me further and hopefully push everyone in the audience further because I’m sure this is not a unique problem to me.

What do you think about that?

Ramit Sethi: I think that’s true. I think that a lot of people have been taught well… I think that the world teaches us to save, but nobody teaches us to spend. And if you take that concept of frugality to the logical extreme, then you start to see saving money as a virtue and spending money as a sin.

And it’s not, that’s not how it is. In fact, the point of living a rich life is not to save money. It’s not. The point of a rich life, in my opinion, is to design a rich life that excites you and then use your money to live as meaningful of a life as you can. So I’m all for a high savings rate and aggressive investments and earning more. I’m totally for that. But there’s another side of the equation that too many people ignore and that’s what I’ve been very excited about.

Mad Fientist: This is interesting because your site is I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Your book is, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. And I’ve always read that as I will teach you to become rich.

But it was only recently as I’m getting into your podcast more and I’m getting into the journal you just released, that I realized that it actually is, I will teach you to be rich and that’s very different than becoming rich.

Ramit Sethi: That’s right.

Mad Fientist: And my question is, was that intentional because obviously you started the site way back in the day.

But were you thinking about that way back then? Or were you thinking of it in the same terms as I was as I would teach you to become rich?

Ramit Sethi: It is about being rich and I think that we should live a rich life today and an even richer life tomorrow. So I don’t like the idea of I have to wait until I’m 75 years old and maybe just, maybe I can go take that Alaskan cruise or treat my family to a nice dinner.

I don’t wanna live that kind of life. And so, yeah, it’s about being rich and being rich can happen even if you have credit card debt, you can still be rich. So the next question that naturally comes up is what is rich? And I think this is where it gets really interesting, this concept of rich for a lot of people, the first images that pop up in their head are you know, being chauffeured around in the back of a limo, wearing some fur coat and eating on some table that holds like 70 people with some butler.

I’m like, guys, that’s Hollywood. That’s Richie Rich. That’s not reality. A rich life is so diverse. It could be buying a beautiful coat. It could be traveling two months a year. It could be having the freedom to pick up your kids from school every afternoon. So a rich life is yours. It’s not mine, it’s yours.

And you define what it is. And if we start from that premise that you decide what your rich life is and suddenly it becomes a lot more exciting to be able to use money to live that life.

Mad Fientist: Absolutely. Okay. And I’m, and that’s why I’m so excited to have you on, and you’re the only person that I could think of to get on for this sort of topic.

So over the past couple of years, you’ve released a couple of things that are actually very helpful for this goal. So if you could, since I’m gonna be referencing them so many times, would you just tell the audience who may not be familiar with your podcast and your new journal, what those both are about?

And then obviously I’ll be using those a lot as we continue this discussion.

Ramit Sethi: Yeah. So initially I wrote my book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. It came out in 2009. I re-released it the 10 year edition in 2019, and I had added about 80 pages of material. A lot of money psychology new material. Also, things had changed in the world, and things had changed in my life.

I had gotten married and I had become much more interested in money and relationships. As I started to talk about this, I realized that I wanted more material on this, and I wanted to help people get more excited about money. I use that word excited intentionally because when you asked the average person what words come to mind when you think of money, they go stress, overwhelm, guilt, am I too late or restriction.

I know you FIRE guys love the word restriction. Oh, I love it. They actually love it. I love it. It’s like someone who has a little scab on their arm and they go, Ooh, I’m gonna pick at this scab. It’s like, stop it, man. You know? Okay. You can restrict a little bit, but it’s not the point of money.

So, a couple of things that I did. First I created a podcast, and the podcast is called I Will Teach You Be Rich. And on this podcast you can actually hear me talking to real couples. I’ll just share one example of a couple who has $825,000 in debt and they’re worried that they can’t afford to have children.

On the other hand, you have a couple who has over $10 million of net worth and they still agonize over the price of blueberries, and they still, they can’t go on a vacation that they want to, they only go where the points will allow them. And I go, at what point do you get to actually enjoy your money?

$10 million and can’t even choose the country you wanna go visit. So here’s the thing about this podcast. Most of us have never actually heard a couple sharing real numbers and the fights that they’ve had for 25 years. The tears, the joys and actually getting on the same page. You may have seen a blog post, but you’ve never actually heard a real couple doing it.

And so, because of our reach, we can find these people and they trust us enough to know that they’re willing to come on the show and share it. So that’s the podcast along with a new journal that I released.

Mad Fientist: Yeah, before we move on to the journal, I just wanna say the podcast is incredible.

I would say it’s sort of like being in a psychiatrist’s office and the couple are on the couch and you’re there like assessing it and you’re just eavesdropping on this really personal conversation. And yes, some of the higher net worth episodes have been really, really useful to me, which we’re gonna talk about.

But yeah, the entertainment value and just feeling like you’re sort of eavesdropping on this very private conversation because you have a, you have a psych background a little bit, don’t you?

Ramit Sethi: I do, I do. Although this isn’t therapy. But yes. When I talk about the money with these couples, we will often end up at, you know, what were the words that they remember their mom and dad saying about money?

And oh my gosh, there was a recent episode, there was a couple that lives in the Midwest and they make a very good salary. They make $130,000 and they cannot figure out why they are constantly behind and in debt. And at one point the dad tells me about his daughter coming home from school. And her school had given her like one of those baskets of food that you would give a child who doesn’t have enough food at home, who’s food insecure.

And he was like, full of rage. He was angry. How could they give her that we are not poor. We make $130,000 a year. And so I started talking to him. I said, how’d you grow up with money? He tells me, well, when I grew up, we didn’t have a lot and there were the haves and the have nots. The haves we’re on the other side of the park.

They were the doctors, the lawyers, the people with the big house. We didn’t have anything. Now as he’s grown up, he makes a very good income. The way he talks about money, he still believes he doesn’t have enough. He still acts as if he doesn’t have enough. And there’s a lot of peculiar behaviors that people without money carry into their adulthood.

And when his daughter asks him about spending money, he says, we can’t afford it. So it’s no surprise that when his daughter goes to school and the teachers ask, how are things going? She says, we can’t afford it. And finally, this was the most haunting moment. I asked him, would you talk to your daughter about money?

And he looked startled. He essentially said, why would I talk about money with her? Essentially, I am protecting her from money. Just think about that. In his view, money is a bad thing. It’s evil. It causes problems and stress, and therefore I’m gonna protect my innocent daughter from having to deal with it.

But that’s not how wealthy people treat money. That’s not how someone who’s living a rich life treats money. Think about somebody who’s like very good with food. They love to eat healthy food. They’re gonna talk about food with their kids. Oh, come on, let’s cut this garlic together, we eat this because it tastes good and it mixes well with that.

How come we don’t do that with money? And so when I suggested to him that there are a lot of people who talk to their kids about money, he was bewildered. Why would you talk to your kids about money? Because in his view, money is something to protect kids from.

Mad Fientist: Wow. Yeah. You see people acting how they act with money and even, you know, how I act with money and how some other FIRE people act with money and you don’t really think about what had gone into making them act that way with money and what they’re still carrying around. And it seems like most of our money views and how we deal with having money or having no money all stem from how money was when we were children.

Ramit Sethi: Yeah, it definitely does. And it’s a funny wrinkle in human psychology that even if we are acting in a way that is not serving us, our mind will create a narrative where we end up being virtuous.

So take someone who has 10 million, just as an extreme example, and they are driving all over town to compare the price of gas. And I go, Hmm, what do you think of that? And they’ll say something like this, well, you know, I don’t like to waste money. Or, it’s not that I drive around for everything, I’m just selective.

So we come up with these words that make us seem virtuous when in reality, as a third party, I’m going… you’re nuts! You made more in interest by lunchtime than you would save over the course of five months of driving around to save 10 cents on gas. Why are we doing this? And more importantly, what are you not allowing yourself to do by focusing on these $3 questions instead of the $30,000 questions?

And it’s comfortable because you know, all that one gas station on Main Street always has a good deal and it’s comfortable and you have mastery of it. But actually at a certain point, you have won that game. You’ve won it, and maybe it’s time to turn the page and go onto a new chapter in life.

Mad Fientist: And that’s where your journal comes in.

So please talk about that because that is just recently released and it is pretty much the ideal workbook for coming up with that. So if you could just tell the audience, who may not be familiar with it, what you just released with the IWT Journal.

Ramit Sethi: So, believe it or not, FIRE people, some people actually are never gonna buy a book and compare the difference between a Roth IRA and a Traditional IRA.

I know, it’s crazy. I know. But I learned this myself. I’m like, why don’t you guys just buy this book , and in fact, get it from the library. You’ll solve all your money problems. And there are a lot of people that are just like, mm, I’m not gonna do that. I go, all right, I get it. We have to remember that most people are not buying any book, much less a money book.

And it seems a little ironic because by the time people are 40, pretty much their number one worry in life is money. So you go, well, why don’t you just read this book or listen to that podcast, YouTube. And there’s a variety of reasons people don’t, but I don’t want to sit here and berate people. Well, that’s not true. I do a little bit. But what I wanna do is help them start to live their rich life. And so I created this journal, and it’s called a no-numbers journal. So you get it and I want you to imagine giving yourself the gift of 15 minutes, your favorite cup of coffee, a quiet room, and you get to sit down and dream.

You get to dream about how you wanna use your money. It’s not about your savings rate, it’s not about the Trinity study, it’s none of that. It’s about, if I could spend more on something that would make my life easier, what would it be? It’s about pulling a pen out and sketching out what your ideal day would be, or even your ideal house.

And yes, there is parts about what should I not spend on, or how should I navigate money in relationships? It’s tactile. And I wanted people to start connecting their money with their lives. I can tell you that most people don’t get motivated by seeing a higher figure in their checking account. I know some people do.

Personally, I love it. Okay. I like it. So that’s why I don’t hate the FIRE community, but I understand a lot of it because I like a high savings rate. I like seeing compound interest. And I get that, but most people are not like that. Most people are like, I actually wanna go out to this really nice restaurant and know that I can pay for it without worrying.

Okay, great. Well let’s start there. And when people start to engage with this journal, it’s just a much more relatable way of clarifying what a rich life is to you. And then for some people they decide, Hey, I wanna start optimizing my money and make it work for me.

Mad Fientist: Yeah, and I have a copy and we actually got some good weather here in Scotland over the summer and I really enjoyed just sitting out there with a cup of coffee in the sun, going through it with my wife, Jill, and trying to really think about it because it is way harder to figure that out especially when, you know, we’re so lucky we’ve reached financial independence we can spend on these things. But yeah, as a frugal person, naturally frugal just my entire life. It is way more difficult to sort of push myself in those areas, but it has been helpful and that’s why the podcast and the journal have been really helpful so definitely just wanted to set those up because I’m going to be referencing them a lot.

But I think before we dive in, maybe just give you a quick update of what’s changed since 2019?

Ramit Sethi: Tell me.

Mad Fientist: Yeah, so we talked in 2019, and I think for the prior 10 years to 2019, I, we averaged the same amount of annual spend.

And you will be happy to know that over 2021 and 2022, it looks like we’re doubling that value for our annual spend.

So I’ve heard you on other podcasts where you’re like, you know, people who say they want to change and like, get better at spending, they don’t really mean it, but I, I actually do mean it.

And we’ve actually worked pretty hard at doing that. 2021, we traveled a lot more and spent a lot more than we would’ve on that travel. We experimented, like we did Premium Economy to the States, and then we did Business Class on the way home just to try those both out and compared them.

And then 2022, we just moved into a new house and I’ve been kitting it out. And even my wife one day, another Amazon box arrived and Jill was like, what is happening? And I was like, this spending thing is incredible. I don’t know what I’ve been missing for the last 40 years of my life, so I’ve been really enjoying it and I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress but there’s still a ways to go because even though we’ve doubled our annual spend, we’re still not even spending what the portfolio could generate at a very conservative withdrawal rate and it doesn’t account for any sort of income that’s coming in.

So I am still trying to push myself, but I just wanted to let you know that thanks to our conversation in 2019, I have been making progress and it’s been so fun and way way more enjoyable than I expected. So thank you for that.

Ramit Sethi: Wow. Well thank you. And thank you for giving me the update. And what makes me happiest to hear that is that you’re having fun doing it, which is the point money is supposed to be fun and that you’re doing it together with your wife. That is amazing. That is the culmination. You know, when it comes to money, I’ve learned at the very beginning levels, it’s all about the what… I made a little money, what do I get to buy or what do I want to do with it? And that’s totally cool. I have no problem. You wanna buy a beautiful coat or take a trip? Amazing. I love it. But at the highest levels of personal finance, it is always about the who. Who do I get to bring with me? Who do I get to surprise or delight, and to hear that you’re doing it with your family is just the culmination of what a rich life really should be.

So, congratulations.

Mad Fientist: Thanks man. Yeah, it’s been great. And before we dive into some of the, the newer stuff I’ve learned from your podcast and your journal, I want to revisit something you said in our first interview, and it was something that made me think you were a lunatic at the time, but I get it now.

And that was why pay less when you could pay more?

Ramit Sethi: That’s right.

Mad Fientist: And I was like, yeah, you gotta have to explain that. And still didn’t, I don’t think I really got it. And it was only recently that we just moved into this new place and I love pour-over coffee. That’s like my morning ritual. I love making it. I love drinking it. I love buying the beans, I love everything about it. And I’ve been waiting until we moved into a place where I could get a proper grinder, because I thought that was the coffee grounds were the only thing that were holding me back because I couldn’t get a really consistent grind.

So I bought this thing that is probably the nicest you can get without going commercial. And it is amazing. It is the nicest thing to look at, the nicest thing to touch. Like I just love pressing the button. I love pulling out the tray. I love everything about it. And I don’t think I really understood that before. I would’ve just picked the cheapest thing that does the job.

And this has shown me that there’s a whole other level that it’s just like brings you so much joy that doesn’t even relate to the actual functionality of the thing, just the actual beauty of it and the design. And so I get that now and my question to you is, I wanna find more of that, but for me, it’s hard to distinguish between quality and status.

Like, is a Rolex that sort of experience or is it just the status that makes that price so high? So I don’t know if you have any experience with that, but I would like to find more of that, just like pure quality. And something else you said in our last episode was like, focus more on value than cost.

So I do wanna get better at that, but for me, I struggle, I think to sort of distinguish between the two because I couldn’t care less about status, but I do really love that quality. So any insight into that?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, awesome to hear. I love, I just love hearing your voice and I love hearing anyone’s voice when they get excited about their primary money dial in their rich life.

So coffee and the way you talk about it, the ingredients and the tools, you can tell this is a passion of yours. I think first of all, that quote you know, why spend less when you can spend more? That’s a Dan Kennedy quote, and it is profound. All of us intuitively get this. Especially if you’re a parent, there are certain things you are going to spend anything on.

It could be the right type of diapers. It could be a car with certain safety features. We all intuitively get it when it’s about our kids or our dogs. My goal is to normalize spending as much on yourself as you do on your kids and your dogs. Okay? Everyone looking around right now at their little golden retriever at their side, like, yeah you give your dog the best food.

How come you think 10 times about how much you spend on yourself? It doesn’t make any sense.

So the fact that you have tasted that is awesome. Now distinguishing between higher quality. Well, first of all, my fantasy has always been to take one of my friends who made some money and I just go, Hey, come visit me in New York and I’m gonna take you out for three days and show you how to spend your money. I’m literally gonna show you the skill of how to spend money.

You’re not gonna like all of it. Some of it you’re going to be like, okay, that was not worth it for me. But some of it, you’re going to go, oh my God, now I get it. For example, there are certain things that you can only understand once you experience or touch them.

A certain type of sweater, a picture doesn’t do it justice. A certain type of food. When you see it being made in front of you and you understand where the ingredients came from and how it was sourced. Oh my God, I never knew that much work went into this, and how it tastes is incredible.

On the other hand, I’ve eaten certain meals where I go, okay, I mean, that was fine. It’s not my taste. I’m probably not gonna come back here. But anyway, that’s my fantasy. Unfortunately, no one ever takes me up on it, no one. Maybe the key is that I go, well, there’s just one catch. You have to have an unlimited budget and they go, what do you mean unlimited? They get really scared I’m going to like make ’em spend like $500,000 in three days. I’m like, I’m not gonna do that, but it is gonna be more than you thought, and they’re not ready for it, which is totally fine. I’m not gonna force anyone into spending it. Here’s what I would say as a real answer to your question, which is most people have spent decades viewing the world through the money lens of cost.

That is their primary and sole money lens. When they go to eat somewhere, they look at how much it costs. When they go to book a flight, they look to the right of the screen to find the lowest cost. They sort by cost, cost, cost, cost. And so there’s a couple of isolated things in people’s lives where they’ll spend more.

Okay. But it is very difficult to extend that to other parts of their life. But the way you’re doing it is the right way, which is you find something you’re passionate about and you start to explore.

If I were gonna encourage that, what I would do is I would look at your finances with you and I would say, okay, let’s pick a number that you have to spend every single month on this hobby of yours, coffee. And let’s just, what would be the number that you’d spend every month to make this like a serious hobby for you?

I feel like I, I feel like I’m spending it because the beans, I get high quality beans shipped in from around Scotland. And, and that was the last piece of kit. Maybe there’s something I could do where I could actually like go and learn the espresso stuff and the barista stuff that I don’t do. I just do a pour over, a V60.

Ramit Sethi: So how much?

Mad Fientist: Whew. Maybe another a hundred pounds a month. Not even that much, I guess.

Ramit Sethi: Mmm. Try again. Don’t you have a lot of money, like, oh, I’m not even spending what I should be in my model. And we’re debating over a hundred pounds. I don’t think so. Try it again.

Mad Fientist: Geez. I don’t even know what I would spend a hundred pounds on. That was like…

Ramit Sethi: Well, we’re gonna get to that . Okay. Just pick a number.

Mad Fientist: 250 pounds.

Ramit Sethi: Okay, fine. 250 pounds. Okay. Alright. I know you can afford it. Okay. Cuz I saw you send over some numbers before. So, cool. Now we have a number that’s quite aggressive for what you’re currently spending and, and I love your comment, I don’t even know what I would spend on .

Okay. Well let’s take a second to dream. Coffee is one of the things that makes you passionate. You love it and you wanna get more experience with it. So how would you discover how to go deeper into that hobby of yours?

Mad Fientist: So Edinburgh is a really big coffee city actually, and they have great cafes who have lots of people that are passionate and lots of roasters. So I’d maybe go down there and chat to them about potentially learning more from them in some way or if they had any recommendations for what to do for somebody in my situation, I guess.

Ramit Sethi: How would you use money to make what you just said easier and better?

Mad Fientist: Oh boy. I’m not used to using money for anything, so…

Ramit Sethi: Hold on. Everybody in the FIRE community, just listen, I’m not used to using money for anything. Just except to keep me warm at night as I wrap myself in my Excel model. Yeah. Oh, I love my 52% savings rate. So good. All right, well, we’re gonna learn that skill right now.

Okay. So you just said I might talk to some of the baristas and learn from them, get some recommendations. How could you use money to make that easier and better?

Mad Fientist: I guess I hire somebody to do that?

Ramit Sethi: Yes. That’s a, that’s one thing. Mm-hmm. great. What else?

Mad Fientist: The only other, the only other thing after I said the 250 was like maybe just a weekend in Italy with Jill and you know, compare the Italian coffee and then go to France a couple months later and try their coffee.

I don’t know. I’m struggling.

Ramit Sethi: That sounds pretty awesome. . Okay. That’s amazing. So there’s so many things we could do. First of all, yeah, you could hire some researcher to schedule a bunch of meetings with you and baristas. Second, let’s say you met a barista, you really like him, him or her and they’re like, oh yeah, you know, next time you try to make your morning brew, do it this way. Do it that way. Try this, do. And you’re like, oh, that sounds really good. And you don’t really feel that confident about it you could say, you know what, can I hire you for two hours to walk me through how I make my morning coffee?

Mad Fientist: You know what that’s a fantastic idea because sometimes it just doesn’t turn out and I don’t know why. And I’m like, how am I gonna figure this out because it’s not something I can YouTube or something. Because I don’t really know why that’s not as good as it should be.

That’s an incredible idea.

Ramit Sethi: That’s what money’s for! You use it to get help, to do things easier and better and more joyfully. And all of us intuitively understand hiring a personal trainer or whatever or we pay somebody to cook food for us if you go to a restaurant. How come we don’t just take the thing we’re interested in and say, I’m gonna go find somebody who’s pretty good at this, can you come to my house and help me understand this for two hours? Of course. And then your idea to go to Italy with your wife is amazing. And while you’re there, you can do a coffee tour. And you can go behind the scenes and you can do your own brew and all kinds of stuff. That is how you start to use your money to really experience what is important to you.

That’s a rich life.

Mad Fientist: Now, I’ve heard you do this sort of thing with people on your podcast a lot, but I did not expect this sort of like clammy reaction that I just experienced. So this isn’t even a question on my list because I wasn’t expecting this sort of reaction to those pressing questions.

Why do you think that is? Why do some people just like sort of get all weird when they think of spending 250 pounds on coffee when they have absolutely no idea to do it. Like, it was a really physical reaction I just had, which I was not expecting.

Ramit Sethi: I know. I love it. I wish we could be in the same room right now. It’s quite striking when you see how people physically react to conversations about money, they shrink. I’ll see someone who’s extremely confident and the minute we start talking about money, they physically shrink into the couch . It’s quite interesting. But you know what, I have a lot of empathy for that cuz I shrink when we talk about a couple things in my life that I know I need to do and I’m not.

So for you I think that it is fascinating that most of us have lost the ability to dream about money. That’s really the crux of why I wrote the journal because think about it, day-to-day, again, I’m speaking generally about most people, you get a paycheck, you pay your bills, maybe you have a little bit left over and then you repeat for the next 45 years, or if you’re a little bit savvier, you take your money, you read all the FIRE blogs, and you do your investments and you do another Monte Carlo simulation and then you just repeat that.

But there’s a skill that most of us have atrophied at, which is learning how to spend meaningfully. I’m not saying you go out there and just drop money everywhere and stuff you don’t care about. I don’t do that. I have a very old car, my computer, my phone, they’re not particularly new. Those things are not that important to me.

But there are things that are really important to me, and so I actively seek out how to go deeper and make my life easier. And so I’m not surprised that you had that reaction and that you almost kind of seem to go blank when I asked you how would you do it? But that’s okay. It takes a little bit of coaching.

That’s why I started the podcast and the journal. I want people to see that you can be inspired to spend money even if you haven’t really done it meaningfully in a long time.

Mad Fientist: Right. And this sort of made me think about one of your episodes, episode 40. I loved it. It was someone in a similar situation, they just couldn’t spend their money. It didn’t seem real to them. Which actually is something that a couple of your episodes had that sort of same experience where you’re talking to them and you’re saying, what would a rich person do in this situation? And they can easily explain that. And then you’re like, well, that’s you. That’s, you are that rich person.

Why aren’t you doing that? And it’s a disconnect between, what you have in the bank, because that’s just some number on a computer screen. It’s meaningless. It feels meaningless to me. And I was listening to these episodes like dreaming with them and being like, wow, what an amazing position they’re in.

They could just dream and they can do all these things. And then I kept having to snap out of it and be like, I’m in that position too.

Ramit Sethi: That’s me.

Mad Fientist: It was amazing to hear because, it was more than one episode. And they’re able to give advice to a rich person, but they don’t believe it themselves that they have anything in the bank really.

Have you come across that a lot?

Ramit Sethi: It’s frequent in a couple of different ways. First, for people who are not very savvy with money or not connected to money, it, whatever they have anywhere besides their checking account does not feel real. So people who are fairly rudimentary with money or new to money, the way that they define how much money they have is literally how much is in my checking account.

Okay. And one of the things I try to do is dissuade people from thinking like that. There’s a few little beliefs that people who don’t have a lot of money really follow. One of them is however much is in my checking account, tells me if I have enough money. That’s not how you should be thinking about money.

Another way is I should buy something based on the monthly payment. You know, car dealers know this and they prey on people. We don’t want to think like that either. We wanna do tco, total cost of ownership.

So some of the things that I do on the podcast and in my work is simply showing people a different way to think about money, such as that dad who thought money was bad and he should never talk to his daughter about it.

Well, actually, money can be really good. And a simple way to do it would be to sit your daughter down if they’re really young, you say. Daddy’s gonna log in and pay our bills so we can keep the lights on. Would you like to help me? Don’t you like light? Oh, do you wanna push the button with me? Go ahead, push it and make it like, oh, let’s celebrate. That was so cool. And then as you get older, it can be things like you know, we’re gonna stay for one night in this town. Can you help us pick a hotel? Here’s the criteria and here’s the budget. And of course, by the time they’re teenagers, if you’re taking a trip, they should be planning an entire day on that vacation.

Mad Fientist: So we’re going to get into some some of the stuff that’s really been useful from your podcast and journal for helping me and then some of the other things that over the last couple years that have been really helpful.

But before we do, I want to pick out something that’s in your journal. It says your prime spending years are from ages 40 to 60. So this was a big slap in the face in two ways to me, because one, it made me actually realize that I’m 40 because in my brain I’m still 20. And it was only when I read that and thought about it again that I was like, I am 40.

This is my prime spending years. And two, it was like, all right, I really do need to get serious about this because yes, I feel like I’m 20, so I should just keep saving, but this is my prime spending years.

Ramit Sethi: It’s deeply counterintuitive and uncomfortable to acknowledge that you do have prime spending years.

So let’s talk about this concept because I like that it’s uncomfortable. I like that it makes you think about your vision for spending.

So in your twenties, you have a lot of time, probably not as much money.

And so, I remember for example, we took a backpacking trip with two of my college buddies one summer, and we stayed at the cheapest places. And we were about to sleep in the train station and our guidebook said, don’t do that. You’ll be robbed. And I just remember that trip.

It was amazing. It was full of adventure and sure we didn’t have a lot of money, but it was great. Then in your thirties, you know, again, following a general pattern, people start to earn a little bit more. They do start to spend a little bit more. Forties tends to be focused around family, but in forties people start to have higher incomes.

And in fact, their incomes will peak in a few years after that. But we should also acknowledge that it’s not just about money, it’s also about time. And it’s also about ability or mobility. So you may have a lot more money when you’re 75, but it’s unlikely you’re gonna be going to Everest.

It’s even unlikely that you may even be traveling abroad depending on health. And these are the kind of conversations that people don’t really wanna have. We have a deeply puritanical society, but interesting society that says, save, save, save until someday, but no one ever really talks about that someday.

It kind of reminds me of Indian culture, which is don’t date, don’t date, don’t date. Okay. It’s time to get married today.

And everyone kind of rolls their eyes at that in the Indian culture, but how come we do exactly the same thing in America with money? It’s actually preposterous when you think about it.

So 40 to 60, in my opinion, is the prime spending years. You have money, you have health, and you do have time. Now, if you accept that, listen, you could disagree with me. You could say, I don’t believe that. I think it’s gonna be 65, or, I’m really healthy. Okay, fine. First off, I wanna say it’s not just about you.

I know plenty of people who are healthy, but they have a sick parent or a, a partner who can’t travel for whatever reason, or can’t do the things they wanna do. So sometimes life is not just about you. We have to keep that in mind. But second, what I want you to do using the journal is to create a list of things that you want to do now, in the next decade, et cetera.

So when you do that, you can start to actually visualize what’s meaningful to you and you can start to do ’em. I just don’t want people to live a life of, I will do that someday. And then, I mean, what a tragedy to live a smaller life than you have to. What an even greater tragedy to end up 70, 80, 90, with millions of dollars in the bank if you follow the FIRE community, never actually having done the things you want to do.

Mad Fientist: Yeah, I completely agree. And we’re gonna hopefully help all the FIRE people out there that are like me and who are probably really uncomfortable with this conversation already.

Ramit Sethi: They already turned this podcast off, by the way. This is gonna be your worst listen to podcast of all. They see Ramit Sethi, they’re like no thanks

Or the minute I start making a joke about, you know, their Monte Carlo simulation. Yeah, it cuts too, it cuts too close, doesn’t it, FIRE people?

Mad Fientist: Ah, that’s what we needed. I need the tough love today. That’s what I brought you on. I knew you’re the only one that could do this. So yeah, the journal definitely there’s a lot I want to touch on in there, but before we do the podcast, episode 40 was really helpful in the sense that, like you said, we can spend on our kids or spend on our dog or spend on somebody else.

And in this episode, there’s a woman who really struggled to spend any money on herself and she was worth millions and millions, but would really rarely ever spend on herself And she went to New York with her husband, which that was a whole ordeal trying to even get her there because she had to spend $300 one night on a hotel.

And anyway, they wanted to go see a Broadway show. So she went down to the Times Square Broadway Ticket Office for like the last minute tickets or whatever, the half price tickets.

And she went there because she’s just so used to spending money and you flipped it around on her and said, you know what, you’ve taken tickets from a family that really does need to only pay half price and that’s all they can afford.

Ramit Sethi: I love this story.

So Rachel and Jack, episode 40, they’re one of my favorite couples. He had invited her. He was taking a work trip to New York, and he’s like, come along. She goes, cool.

They were gonna stay at the Moxy Hotel in the East Village, which is a pretty affordable hotel. And she looked at the price and it was $297, which is, for Manhattan, fairly reasonable. And she goes, that is outrageous. I’m not coming. She was just gonna cancel the trip. And he goes, no, come on. I want you to come.

And so she made them stay at a different hotel in Chelsea. And then when the price lowered, the next day, they moved all their suitcases back to the Moxy Hotel. Remember, work was paying for part of this anyway. So I asked, Rachel how much are you worth? And she said, $5 million, I said, could you say that a little louder for the mic, please?

$5 million. Okay, now everyone listening goes, oh my gosh. That’s, that’s so weird. Why? Why doesn’t she just enjoy it? But most of us do exactly the same thing. We do the same thing, whether it’s with a restaurant or a hotel. The way that we act with our money is often rooted when we didn’t have any in our childhood, teen years, or early twenties.

In fact, if I ask people like, how do you decide how much to spend on a vacation? And we really get into it, they, the answer really emerges that they basically have a number in mind. That number was born when they were basically 20, because that’s what they remember about how to plan a vacation. And they have not adjusted that number as they have made more money.

So then she tells us about this Time Square thing and she goes, we actually have no problem spending money on restaurants. We ate out, we ate well. We went to see a show. I said, tell me about that show. So she waited in the line for last minute tickets. This is basically way cheaper discount tickets.

And at this point, I’m like, oh my God, Rachel, you have $5 million and you waited in that line. You didn’t just go to the box office and buy the ticket you wanted. And she goes, no, I needed a deal. So then, you know what I realized? I’m a master of Indian mom guilt . Okay? And so I had to bust it out.

Anyone who grew up with a Indian mom, Asian mom, many types of moms or dads, they go, you know what, it’s my time. I’m gonna leverage this. I’m gonna weaponize this. So I, I did it. I was like, I’m about to become a guilt driven Indian mom. So I was like, Rachel, you realize that there was a family in New York for the first and only time with their kids and as they saw you getting that last Lion King ticket, they saw this multimillionaire woman snatch the tickets outta their kids’ hand.

How do you think those kids felt? And she looked like she was gonna cry. And I was just like, I had the biggest grin on my face. Cause I’m like, gotcha.

Mad Fientist: It was absolutely perfect.

Ramit Sethi: So you know, listen, we have a little fun on this podcast, but the point is I told her, Rachel, you make too much money to do that.

And I said, Rachel, you cannot afford to do that anymore. If you have $5 million, you’re not allowed to be shopping or standing in line for the discount tickets and taking away that scarce commodity from someone else. Now people get a little mad when I say, how dare you Ramit this America? We could do whatever we want with our money.

Okay, you can, but first of all, is it right? And second of all, is it actually serving you? At what point do you get to walk up to the box office and pick the ticket you want? At what point?

Or in episode 16 when Amy and Chris are choosing their vacations based on where they have Marriott points, I go, at what point do you get to choose where you wanna go just based on where you wanna go?

Mad Fientist: That was really good because he said, let’s go to Italy. She started looking into everything she wanted to do in Italy. They have $8 million in the bank. And then I guess last minute he realized that his points weren’t gonna work or something. So they ended up going to Greece and the poor wife was like, I just got my heart set on Italy and here we are in Greece. And yeah, just ruined the whole experience. And I feel for her, because I think I’ve, I’m sure I’ve done that to my wife, numerous times.

Ramit Sethi: Should we get your wife on this call? Is this about to turn into my podcast? This is gonna be amazing.

Mad Fientist: Well, we’ve moved hotel rooms mid trip many times and she hates that so much.

Ramit Sethi: Why do you do that?

Mad Fientist: So, yeah. She would be great to chat to because she would be echoing a lot of the same things that have been echoed in episode 40 and 60.

Ramit Sethi: Here’s the thing, I think that sometimes there’s absolutely virtue in using cost as your money lens, right? Like, if I’m going to buy some commodity, I don’t know, nails or something, well, I don’t go to Home Depot, but if I ever did in a like alternate reality, which is my hell, and I walk into Home Depot, yeah, I want the cheapest nails.

What do I care? It’s a commodity. But I think that sometimes there are higher or different money lenses you can use. If you’re going on a trip and it’s something special, maybe the extra 50 bucks or a hundred bucks actually doesn’t make a difference. In fact, maybe it’s not even about not making a difference. Maybe it’s something you can turn into an amazing experience. You could turn to your partner and say, you know what? For this trip, I really wanna do something special. I know that you’ve always wanted to get a massage at a hotel. I wanna arrange it. So the day we arrive after that long trip, I’ll take care of all the bags, and you just go and get that massage. And when you come back, we don’t have anything scheduled for the rest of the night. You just take a nap and we can just relax. Wow. So notice the difference, not only in spending, but in positioning. To yourself and to your partner. I’m not going there and saying, hey it’s, it’s no big deal. Instead I’m saying, this is going to be amazing and I’m gonna do it for you.

And for Rachel, sometimes what I wanted her to do in Times Square was to be generous to herself. Rachel and Jack had done an incredible job saving money. The classic I Will Teach You to be Rich, way, low cost, long-term investments over a long period of time. They had made it.

And so we find it much easier to be generous to other people than to ourselves. But Rachel and Jack won the game. And so they need to take their winnings and in their case, their winnings might be seeing The Lion King or whatever show with better seats, with more ease to walk in and say, we don’t have to spend two hours of our valuable time in New York waiting in line.

And that’s really what I want people to imagine is the possibilities of using money and actually embracing money as a good thing, not an evil thing that we need to minimize and avoid or hoard.

Mad Fientist: No, definitely. And, since listening to that episode… I have this stack of old t-shirts that I’ve been carting around the country for the last, who knows, 20 years. Because I’m like, maybe one day I’ll need a rag and you know what I mean?

And now, after listening to episode 40, I was like, well, you know, somebody could actually wear this shirt and actually provides a lot of utility here I am storing it for the last 20 years because I think I need a rag. And it’s like, I can buy a $2 rag if I need a rag. You know?

So it’s like, I think that’s really helpful for people that aren’t used to focusing on themselves to sort of like get a little gateway into that and be like, well actually, you know, yeah, this will benefit me because that stack of shirts is finally out of my life and I don’t have to keep carting them around. But then also it’s like, okay, somebody else is going to benefit a lot more from these shirts than I will.

Ramit Sethi: Yeah, that’s a great example. It includes so many elements of some of my philosophies, you know, one of them is $3 questions versus $30,000 questions.

You know, a stack of old shirts, what should I do? That’s a $3 question. Just stop. Let’s not deal with these anymore. The next thing is generosity. Could someone else benefit from these more than I could? Yeah. And the third is being decisive. So many times when I talk to people who have money and struggle to spend it, there’s a lack of being decisive.

And in fact, I think much of what guides the frugality world is a sense of fear. There’s this idea that I’m not gonna go eat at that nice restaurant. That’s not the kind of person I am. And anyway, if I did go eat there, deep down now, I’m afraid I would like it so much that I would trip and fall and have to eat at that nice restaurant every night for the rest of my life.

And I don’t believe that. I think you can have a nice experience and you can also trust yourself enough to know what is enough. And that is really important in a rich life. I’m not saying everyone here just twirl around three times, repeat rich life and then go buy a private jet. That’s not how it works. You need to be able to afford it. I talk about the numbers. I’m not just out here doing some woo-woo life-coach BS. But I also think that you can trust yourself enough to experience something amazing and know that I will never let myself spend more than within our margin of safety.

Mad Fientist: Yeah, absolutely. And that leads nicely to the money rules because actually one of my money rules that I developed after going through your journal is to not limit spending on one-off experiments.

Because like I mentioned before, we flew premium economy to the States and then we flew business class home. And now one of my money rules is to fly premium economy on all flights over five hours because that was well worth the double the price of economy. But then business wasn’t really worth it to me for three times the price of premium economy.

Maybe one day it will, and maybe, you know, I’ll do another experiment once we travel with our new son, which that may change everything. But that’s one of my money rules now because yes, I know I’m not gonna go crazy and just start living this lavish lifestyle that then bankrupts me. And those one-off experiments are really important for pushing my boundaries and finding what it is that it is worth spending on.

Ramit Sethi: Yeah. I love that. It is an experiment. I think we shouldn’t be so worried about getting all of our spending decisions right. I had a program where I talked about the psychology of money and I cover this now, we have a new money coaching program. And one of the principles I shared is that it’s okay to waste money.

Let me explain what I mean. I’m not saying just go out and just throw money around. That’s not what I’m saying. But I’m saying that when you’re in your early twenties, you don’t have a lot of money. You have to make sure that you are being extremely careful. So you might be looking at menus before you go out. You might be declining invitations because you just can’t afford it. Okay, great. That makes perfect sense. But as you make more, certainly in your case, as you have made more and you have a handle on how much you can afford, once in a while you’re gonna spend money on something and it’s going to be a waste.

And that might involve, you got some late fee on some account, and as much as I hate late fees, you discover that it might take you like six hours to get that thing reversed. In your twenties, you’re like, yeah, I’m gonna spend it. I have nothing else to do, and I’m gonna make this company pay. At your stage, you might go, you know what? It sucks and it’s not fair, but it’s not worth my time. Or you might try a certain restaurant or a certain product and it’s just not for you. And so instead of letting the tail wag the dog and saying, wow, I spent a hundred dollars on this thing, I’m going to make it work for me. I’m going to, for example, carry those things around with me to every country, you go, you know what, it’s just not for me. I’m done with it. I’m selling it or donating it. So the more money you make, the more money you will waste. That is natural if you are not wasting a little bit of money, that means you’re probably not thinking about the possibilities of how you could actually be spending it.

So again, just to reiterate, I’m not encouraging anyone to go out and waste money. I am saying that at a certain point it is okay if you incidentally waste a little bit of money because you have a bigger purpose than eliminating all waste of your personal finances.

Mad Fientist: That’s a great point. Because efficiency and lack of waste is what drives a lot of people like me, I would imagine. But you’re right, I’ve wasted far too many hours that I can’t get back on things that obviously don’t matter now in the scheme of money at least.

Ramit Sethi: The efficiency thing always gets me because you’re right, there’s a lot of crossover with efficiency and FIRE, and people they’re like, how dare you not be efficient?

And I just go, are you efficient when you give your husband or your wife or mom or dad a hug? Like do you literally measure how long it’s going to produce the maximum happiness? And they’re just like, no, that would be psycho. I’m like, you’re a psycho by looking at everything through the lens of efficiency.

Maybe sometimes it’s actually not meant to be efficient. There are other virtues besides efficiency… safety, security, a lot of things and so I want people to be more adaptable. If you’re playing the game of life with money, you don’t only have one money lens – cost. You have others, and you use them in the right situations. To do that, you need to be well practiced with all of them.

Mad Fientist: That’s fantastic advice. And I can’t believe it, we’re already coming up to an hour that has gone so quickly. So I don’t want to keep you too long.

I can’t thank you enough. Like I knew you were the only person for this chat and I’m so glad we were able to make it happen.

Obviously I’ll link to your new podcast and the journal and iwt.com. Anything else I should put in the show notes just so people can find you?

Ramit Sethi: For anyone who has questions and wants to stay focused on their money. We have a money coaching program as well. We do a coaching call every month and we have this amazing community. We’ll send you the link for that.

Mad Fientist: Nice.

Ramit Sethi: Maybe you can post it. We’d love to welcome more people into that program too.

Mad Fientist: Excellent. Well thank you so much, Ramit. Really appreciate it. And yeah, hopefully I’ll touch base with you in another three or four years and I’ll have made even more progress.

Ramit Sethi: That sounds great. I always love coming on your show. I love talking to you. Thank you for having me back.

Mad Fientist: All right, buddy. Talk to you soon. Thanks, bye.

Ramit Sethi: All right, bye.

Related PostRamit Sethi - I Will Teach You to Be RichFor the first time, Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You to Be Rich shares his thoughts on FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early)!

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Over the last few years, I interviewed members of my family to find out two things:1. How I became the Mad Fientist (i.e. where did I get my extreme ideas about money) 2. What advice they’d give to parents hoping to raise money-smart children

This is a short but sweet holiday episode to end the year and I hope you enjoy it!Listen Nowhttps://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/madfientist/my-family-interview.mp3* Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts * Download MP3 by right-clicking here

Full TranscriptComing soonRelated PostMy Brother - Using the Power of Money to Pursue Your PassionJoin me for an interview with my little brother that we recorded live in Venice! We talk about growing up, extreme frugality, and how you don't need to wait until FI to use the power money gives you to pursue your passions.

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Thanks to a huge life event, I'm appreciating the benefits of financial independence and early retirement more than ever!

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To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Financial Independence Podcast, here are the highlights from my first guest - Mr. Money Mustache!

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Patrick Aime from Aime to Invest shares the important lessons he learned on his rollercoaster journey from bankruptcy to FI millionaire!

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The Escape Artist joins me on the Financial Independence Podcast to talk about pursuing FIRE in the United Kingdom!

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I joined a virtual Bogleheads meeting to talk about life after financial independence and early retirement!

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A Mad Fientist reader shares how he utilizes tax-advantaged accounts to unlock even more cost-saving benefits!

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It's been five years since I left my full-time job so here's my fifth (and final) annual update on post-FI life!

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Learn how to retire early with kids from the dad who has 14 of them! Rob shares how his family achieved FIRE six years ahead of schedule.

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I finally talked to the person who introduced me to the idea of financial independence - Jacob Lund Fisker from Early Retirement Extreme!

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There's a better alternative to resolutions and goals...especially if you're pursuing financial independence and early retirement.

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Military servicemembers have access to incredible tax, investing, and travel benefits that can accelerate the journey to FI!

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The Ultralearning Experiment was a bigger success than I'd even hoped and here's what I learned from it (plus a massive announcement)!

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One of my favorite writers, Morgan Housel, shares the investing lessons he's learned from COVID-19, history, and other academic fields!

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Sticking to your long-term investing goals during turbulent times can be difficult but portfolio rules and systems can help. Here are mine...

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The best thing about financial independence is also the worst. I explain what it is and also share details about the secret project I've been working on!

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I recently wrote an article about why I think you should start a business (and how you can guarantee success).

To put everything in that post to the test, I’m going to run an experiment…

I’m going to start a completely new business from scratch and I’m going to document the entire process!

What’s the point starting a new business after already achieving FI?

As I mentioned in that post, creating a business around one of your interests is a great way to force yourself to dive deeper into something you enjoy.

And as we learned during my recent interview with Cal Newport, going deeper into something results in more happiness and fulfillment.

How this will work Rather than have multiple posts about this experiment, I’m just going to update this post as the experiment progresses.

I’m stealing this style of posting from my favorite entrepreneur site, MoneyLab.co.

MoneyLab is written by my buddy Matt and is where he runs interesting business experiments, documents all the details, and shares the results.

A lot of his experiments aren’t successful and don’t make any money at all but it’s nice to see that honesty and transparency (especially in the “online business” space).

He also has a really entertaining podcast that’s worth checking out (him and his cohost, Andrew from ListenMoneyMatters, have the best chemistry out of anyone in podcasting so the episodes are always a lot of fun to listen to).

Anyway, he dedicates a page to each of his experiments and updates the page as he goes along and I really like that style so I’m borrowing it for this experiment.

To keep the experiment as fair as possible, I’m not going to publically share the URL of the new project here.

Since the Mad Fientist has been around a long time and has a lot of authority in the eyes of the search engines, I don’t want to give my new site a big head start by linking to it from here.

If you’re interested in checking out what I’m working on though, enter your email below to join the Mad Fientist email list and I’ll send you the URL and will keep you updated on the experiment’s progress.

Success! Now just check your email!

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Email AddressSubscribe Note: If you’re already on the Mad Fientist email list, the email you received today about this post contains all the details.

Obviously having some of you visit my new site is going to skew the numbers a bit but I can’t imagine many of you will be recurring visitors (you’ll see what I mean when you read about the site below).

Right Type of Business The first step of starting a business is to make sure you’re starting the right type of business.

As I mentioned in the other post, you want to choose a business that falls within the diamond in the center of this image:

What to Think About When Choosing a Business to Start The business I plan to start is a YouTube channel about synthesizers (yes, I do realize how dorky that sounds).

Let’s see if it falls within that diamond for me…

Interest Am I interested in synthesizers?

Yes, I spend the majority of my free time playing, reading about, and watching videos about synths.

Am I interested in producing videos?

Yes, I’ve been enjoying YouTube more than any other online content recently and the idea of creating my own videos is really exciting.

Improve Do I want to learn more about synthesizers and get better at using them?

Yes, one of the main reasons I wanted to quit my full-time job was so that I can devote more time to music and getting better at synthesizing sounds is one of the most excting aspects of that.

Meet Do I want to meet other people who are interested in synths?

Yes, I’d like to meet musicians who are interested in similar music so this could be a great way to do that.

It’d also be incredible to join one of my favorite bands so that’d be much more likely to happen if I’m already known online as someone who is really good with synths (I know that’s a long shot but most of my favorite bands are small so it is possible).

Utilize Do I have skills that I could utilize to get this business off the ground, that I would enjoy using, and/or would like to improve on?

Yes, I’d say I’m already more knowledgable than most about synths so that’s really all it takes to teach others (you don’t have to know everything…you just have to know more than some people).

I’ve realized through my writing here that I’m good at breaking down complex topics into easily-understandable chunks so that skill will definitely come in handy.

I’ve also developed a lot of knowledge about how online businesses work, thanks to the Mad Fientist, so I could utilize those skills to get my site off the ground quicker.

Does it matter that I’ve not produced videos before? Not really. I can learn as I go and as long as the quality isn’t awful, I can’t imagine it will make too much of a difference at first. It is something I’m looking forward to getting better at so that’s more important than being amazing from the start.

Business Potential Since the business idea falls within the diamond described above, it’s time to see if the business has potential.

The Reddit Test Back when I started the Mad Fientist in 2012, I noticed that the Financial Independence subreddit had a healthy number of subscribers (50,000-80,000) and was growing.

This is quite a good test for business viability because it shows that…

1. There’s a potential audience for what you’re planning to build (e.g. if the number of subscribers is over 10,000)
2. Interest in the topic is expanding (e.g. if the subscriber numbers are growing at a good rate)
3. It’s not already so big that you’ve likely missed the boat (e.g. if the number of subscribers is over 300,000)

When I started thinking about this idea, the Synthesizers subreddit had around 80,000 subscribers and was growing nicely. Now, it’s over 100,000 and is growing more quickly so I feel I need to get started soon or will be too late to the party.

Note: I’m not saying you can’t start a business in a space that doesn’t have an existing audience or already has a very large one…it’ll just likely be a bit more difficult.

Gap in the Market It’s also worth trying to identify a gap in the market that you would be happy and able to fill.

When I started the Mad Fientist back in 2012, there weren’t many sites focusing on the hard numbers of early retirement.

Since I’m good at math and enjoy playing around with numbers, I figured I could be the one to build spreadsheets and run experiments to find new strategies to retire earlier.

The reason I keep coming back to this new synth business idea is because I think there’s a gap there that I’ll be able and willing to fill.

Currently, there isn’t a great video series available for beginners. There are some written tutorials but they are overly complex and there are a few videos but they are either really old or not comprehensive.

Since I’ve realized with the Mad Fientist that I’m good at breaking down complex topics and making them easily understandable, I know I can use that skill in this new space to create a free introduction to sound synthesis course.

Do I know everything about synthesizers? No.

Have I ever produced a video series before? No.

That doesn’t matter though. As I already mentioned, I have above-average skills in a few areas and there’s a gap in the market so that should make up for my lack of experience in other areas (just as my math/analytical/programming skills made up for my lack of writing experience or interviewing experience when I started the Mad Fientist).

Potential Revenue Streams As I mentioned in my start a business post, making money doesn’t need to be the primary goal (especially if you’re already FI) but it does need to be a goal.

The IRS considers a business that doesn’t earn money as a “hobby” and doesn’t let you take all those great business tax breaks so you need to earn money (or be trying to earn money) to make it a business in the IRS’s eyes.

Therefore, it’s a good idea to think about potential monetization opportunities before starting out.

For this new synth business, here are some of my options:

• Adsense – I can run Google Adsense ads on my YouTube videos and earn money from views
• Amazon Affiliate – When recommending synths and other music gear, I can use Amazon affiliate links to earn a commission from those sales
• Syntorial Affiliate – There’s an app called Syntorial that helps train your ears to get better at synthesizing sounds. It’s an incredible app and they have an affiliate program so I could earn money from recommending something that I’d recommend anyway (just like Personal Capital on this site)
• Course Sales – I can sell a downloadable version of the beginner’s course I make
• Custom Patches – I can sell the synth patches that I create
• Advanced Courses – Once the free beginner course is finished, I can create an advanced course that I’ll sell instead of giving away for free

It’s obvious there’s a lot of revenue potential here, especially compared to this Mad Fientist business (i.e. a site where I’m trying to convince people NOT to spend money so that they can get to FI quicker, haha).

Non-Monetary Benefits It’s also good to think about non-monetary benefits you can try to get with your business.

For this one, here are some things I’ll be keeping in mind…

• Free Gear – If I have a popular YouTube channel that reviews synths, maybe I can get free gear to test out and review
• Free Events – I’m paying to go to a synth festival this year (see below) but maybe I could get a press pass next year, once my channel is more established

Launch Strategy I wasn’t planning to launch this business right now but something came up that pushed my timeline forward – Moogfest.

Moogfest is an annual technology conference and music festival hosted by one of the oldest and most-respected companies in the synth game – Moog.

At this festival, you can buy an engineering pass and spend two days with Moog engineers building an unreleased Moog synthesizer.

I’ve been wanting to learn how to build my own synths for a while now and this year, they will be building a vocoder so I knew I had to go.

Getting some soldering practice in before Moogfest The engineering pass is really expensive though so I wouldn’t have bought it just because I wanted it.

Since I have been thinking about starting this business, however, I decided to use Moogfest as an excuse to launch my channel (which will therefore let me buy the Engineering Pass as a business expense).

The synth community is really interested in Moogfest so producing videos at the event will be a great way to launch my channel and help me get a name for myself in the YouTube synth space.

I plan to live-vlog the festival, create a cool video of me building the vocoder, and record a bunch of other footage that I can use later.

This brings me to the unfair advantage of FI…

Unfair FI Advantage I can’t imagine many synth YouTubers have the time or money to get an engineering pass and spend a few days building a synthesizer.

That gives me an advantage and should allow me to create interesting and valuable content that the other channels aren’t able to.

What I’ve Already Done Since I’m launching this business sooner than I expected, here are the things I’ve been focusing on…

Branding When people search for Moogfest on YouTube and find me, I want them to be really impressed with what they see and I want my channel to look professional (so that people take me seriously and subscribe).

Coming up with a good brand for the Mad Fientist is probably the main reason it’s still around today (check out this article for that whole story).

I think I’ve settled on a name for this new project and have obtained most of the social accounts for that name.

I’ve also designed a logo. Usually, I’d hire my buddy who created the Mad Fientist logo but he’s really busy this month and won’t be able to get something to me in the next couple of weeks so I just created my own.

I can always change it later, just like I did with the Mad Fientist logo.

Original Mad Fientist Logo that I created myself Website I created a simple webpage with HTML and CSS that simply displays my logo and has links for my YouTube channel, Facebook page, Twitter page, and Instagram page.

I’ll obviously be adding to this at some point but I don’t have time to get fancier now so this will have to do.

Social As I mentioned, I secured Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram handles for this new business.

I’m not sure which of those I’ll actually use but it’s always good to lock down everything that you can before you start.

Business Cards Once I finished my logo, I got some business cards printed so that I can hand them out to people at Moogfest and can leave them laying around for people to find.

Next Steps There are quite a few things I definitely want to get done before my official launch next week.

Video Intro Sequence I want to make sure I have my videos branded with an intro sequence so I’m going to need to put something simple together myself.

I’m not worried about making the weird synth noises for the intro but I haven’t done any animating before so I’m not sure what I’ll do for that (may just keep it simple with a static image, until I can get my friend to do it for me later, or I may put a simple animation together in Keynote).

Plan my Trip I’ll be going to Moogfest alone so I should have plenty of time to record a lot of content (my wife has to deal with enough bleeps and bloops at home so it’s not surprising she doesn’t want to travel to hear more of that).

There’s a lot going on at the festival though so I’ll need to plan what I want to see and think about what videos I want to try to make.

Current Business Statistics Income Since I haven’t launched yet, I have received $0 of income so far :(

Expenses I have racked up quite a few expenses though…

• Domain Names – $27
• Website – $0 (I hosted my new site on the same Dreamhost VPS that I host this site on)
• Email List – $0 (I already have a ConvertKit account for the Mad Fientist so I just set up a tag for the new site)
• Camera – $599 (Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark iii)
• Camera Tripod – $17
• Lavalier Mic and Accessories – $75 (Rode smartLav+)
• Moogfest Engineering Pass – $1500
• Flights – $758
• Accommodation – ??? (I haven’t booked yet)
• Synth 3D Pixel Graphic – $58
• Business Cards – $31

3D pixel art I bought to use for my logo The great thing about business expenses is you can use them to offset other income/profits at tax time so it’s like getting a big percentage off of things you’d like to buy anyway (since they reduce your taxable income).

Guaranteed Success As I mentioned in my start a business post, you can guarantee success if you pick the right business.

Even if I don’t earn a single penny with this new venture, it’s already been a big success because…

• I’ve learned more about synthesizers than I would have had I not started this business
• I’m going to get to attend a fun music/technology conference that I wouldn’t have otherwise
• I’ll be taught how to build synthesizers (something I’ve wanted to do for years) by the engineers at the most iconic synthesizer manufacturer in the world
• I will get to spend time with my family and friends when I’m back in the States on this business trip
• I’ll also get to see one of my favorite bands play a one-off reunion show that I wouldn’t have otherwise (Brainiac!)
• I’m going to learn a lot more about photography and video production (which is also something I’ve been wanting to do) now that I have a proper camera to use

Progress Updates May 2019 I just published my first video from the footage I filmed at Moogfest and here are my thoughts…

• I forgot how intimidating it is to launch something new for the first time. It’s been 7 years since I started Mad Fientist and the memories of those difficult early days must have faded.
• I underestimated the amount of work that it takes to create a video. The video I released is 2 minutes and 22 seconds long but hours and hours went into making it.
• It’s weird not having an audience. I’ve gotten so used to receiving immediate feedback whenever I publish anything on Mad Fientist so it was weird to work so hard on the video and then get nothing back in return.

October 2020 I haven’t updated you about this experiment because I actually decided to put it on hold.

Although Moogfest was amazing and I was able to create and publish my first video from the footage I filmed there, I realized afterwards that this project would take me away from what I really should be doing (see this post for what that is).

I have a tendency to “productively procrastinate”, which is to say I do productive things to avoid doing the harder (but more important) things I should be doing. Since I’m doing productive things, there’s less guilt than there is with normal procrastination but it’s still as detrimental.

Since writing and releasing an album is my #1 goal, I need to devote all my time to doing that. So even though synthesizers are related to that goal, creating a YouTube channel about synthesizers would be too time-consuming for the benefit it provides to the album project (since things like video editing, promotion, etc. don’t contribute to the album but take up a lot of time).

I do want to continue with this experiment though so I plan to pick it back up again after my album gets released.

Stay tuned!

Related PostWhy Everyone Should Have Their Own Business (and How to Guarantee Success)If you focus on the right things and start your business in the correct way, you're guaranteed to improve you life both before and after early retirement!

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